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THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE 
DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 


^■ng^y^o 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  ■    BOSTON   •   CHICAGO  -   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE 

DEGRADATION  OF  THE 
DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 


BY 
HENRY  ADAMS 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 

BROOKS  ADAMS 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1920 

AU  rights  reterved 


COPTBIQHT,   1919, 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  November,  1919. 


Vorisooli  ^tte» 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


CollegB 
Library 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

Before  submitting  the  following  pages  to  the  public, 
I  have  a  few  words  to  say,  lest  my  purpose  should  be  mis- 
understood. I  want  to  make  it  clear,  once  for  all,  that 
I  am  not  proposing  to  write  anything  approaching  to  a 
memoir  of  my  brother.  He  has  written  his  memoirs  for 
himself.  For  me  to  try  to  improve  on  them  would  be 
superfluous,  not  to  say  impertinent.  Nor  do  I  suggest 
any  criticism  of  his  essays  which  are  annexed.  These  I 
have  long  thought  unanswerable.  With  their  conclusions 
I  fully  agree.     I  have  no  further  comment  to  make. 

I  am  attempting  something  quite  different  from  this.  I 
am  seeking  to  tell  the  story  of  a  movement  in  thought 
which  has,  for  the  last  century,  been  developing  in  my 
family,  and  which  closes  with  the  "Essay  on  Phase,  "which 
ends  this  volume. 

At  this  particular  juncture  of  human  affairs  the  ten- 
dency is  very  strong  throughout  the  world  to  deify  the 
democratic  dogma,  and  to  look  to  democracy  to  accom- 
pUsh  pretty  promptly  some  approach  to  a  millennium 
among  men. 

▼ 


VI  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

This  form  of  belief  was  strong  in  my  family  a  century 
ago,  and  found  expression  through  my  grandfather, 
John  Quincy  Adams,  who  made  the  reaUzation  thereof 
the  work  and  ambition  of  his  life  and  who,  when  he  grew 
old,  practically  gave  his  hfe  for  the  cause.  As  an  apostle 
of  this  doctrine,  I  take  it,  he  must  always  be  one  of  the 
most  commanding  figures  in  our  history,  when  he  comes 
to  be  fully  understood,  and  as  such  I  give  him  the  chief 
place  in  my  story.  He  based  his  hopes  of  success,  in  his 
supreme  effort,  on  the  beUef  that  God,  in  whose  existence, 
at  that  period  in  his  life,  he  did  not  doubt,  favored  him, 
and  would  aid  him ;  but  he  died  declaring  that  God  had 
abandoned  him,  and  was  only  kept  from  confessing 
agnosticism  by  his  love  and  veneration  for  his  mother, 
which  even  passed  the  adoration  of  Cathohcs  for  the  Virgin, 
and  whose  memory  was  an  obstacle  which  he  could  not 
surmount,  when  it  came  to  renouncing  his  dream  of  im- 
mortality. But  so  far  as  he  had  watched,  during  a  life- 
time, the  progress  of  the  democrat  toward  perfection,  he 
had  little  to  say  in  the  way  of  hope.  And  so  he  died. 
His  life  was  a  tragedy,  ending  in  the  Civil  War,  which 
he  had  long  foreseen  approaching,  but  which  he  had  been 
unable  to  do  anything  to  avert.  Yet  the  greatest  tragedy 
of  all  for  us,  and  for  all  optimists  who  believe  in  the  advent 
of  perfection  through  the  influence  of  democracy,  is  the 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE  Vli 

condition  in  which  we  have  been  left  since  the  close  of 
the  war.  I  wish  to  point  out  that  the  Civil  War  was 
fought,  presumably,  to  enforce  the  democratic  principle 
"of  the  natural  equahty  of  man,  and  the  possession  of 
certain  rights  of  which  he  cannot  be  deprived  by  vio- 
lence." But,  viewed  in  this  light,  our  country  is  as  much 
in  the  midst  of  a  social  war  now  as  she  was  when  Lincoln 
died.  And  she  is  so  because  she  has  tried  to  ignore  certain 
fundamental  facts  which  are  stronger  than  democratic 
theories.  I  suppose  that  the  time  has  now  come  when  I 
must  refer  to  myself  as  a  part  of  this  family  tree,  although 
no  work  of  mine  has  any  interest  for  the  present  discus- 
sion save  in  so  far  as  something  I  may  have  said  or  written 
may  have  been  suggestive  to  Henry.  Like  Henry,  I 
inherited  a  belief  in  the  great  democratic  dogma,  as  I 
inherited  my  pew  in  the  church  at  Quincy,  but,  as  I  have 
explained  in  my  preface,  in  my  early  middle  life  I  fell 
into  difficulties  which  only  good  fortune  prevented 
from  turning  out  as  tragically  for  me,  as  did  the  election 
of  1828  for  my  ancestor.  In  this  crisis  of  my  fate  I 
learned,  as  a  lawyer  and  a  student  of  history  and  of 
economics,  to  look  on  man,  in  the  light  of  the  evidence 
of  unnumbered  centuries,  as  a  pure  automaton,  who  is 
moved  along  the  paths  of  least  resistance  by  forces  over 
which  he  has  no  control.    In  short,  I  reverted  to  the  pure 


Vlii  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

Calvinistic  philosophy.  As  I  perceived  that  the  strongest 
of  human  passions  are  fear  and  greed,  I  inferred  that  so 
much  and  no  more  might  be  expected  from  a  pure  democ- 
racy as  might  be  expected  from  any  automaton  so 
actuated.  As  a  forecast  I  suggested  that  the  first  great 
social  movement  we  might  expect,  should  be  the  advent 
of  something  resembling  a  usurer's  paradise,  to  be  pres- 
ently followed  by  some  such  convulsion  as  has  always 
formed  a  part  of  such  conditions  since  the  beginning  of 
time.  The  precedents  are  plenty.  Lastly,  I  come  to 
Henry's  philosophy,  which  I  conceive  stands  by  the  side 
of  his  grandfather's  philosophy,  as  the  most  interesting 
discussion  of  the  great  democratic  dogma  of  modem 
times.  Henry  has  followed  very  much  his  grandfather's 
scientific  methods,  saving  so  far  as  those  methods  turned 
upon  reUgion,  and,  I  apprehend,  that  Henry  has  demon- 
strated certain  facts.  The  first  great  fact  is  that  science 
is  simk  in  such  chaos  that,  from  the  teachings  of  science, 
it  is  impossible  to  show  that  the  world  itself,  or  man  as  a 
portion  of  the  world,  has  been  evolved  in  obedience  to 
any  single  power  which  might  be  called  a  unified  creator. 
Its  tendency  is  always  to  suggest  complexity  as  a  motor. 
Therefore  democracy  must  partake  of  the  complexity  of 
its  infinitely  complex  creator,  and  ultimately  end  in 
chaos.     Meanwhile    society    is    steadily    undergoing    a 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE  IX 

degradation  of  vital  energy^  I  will  not  enter  further  now 
upon  the  arguments  set  forth  in  the  "  Letter  to  Teachers  " 
and  in  "  Phase. "    They  speak  for  themselves. 

Nevertheless,  I  submit  that  these  collective  results, 
being  those  drawn  by  one  family  from  their  experience 
and  study  throughout  an  entire  century,  and  which  have 
been  reached  under  an  environment  the  most  favorable 
possible  toward  creating  a  belief  in  the  great  democratic 
dogma,  had  it  been  in  any  degree  true,  are  at  least 
worthy  of  the  calm  consideration  of  fair-minded  persons. 

When  my  grandfather,  John  Quincy  Adams,  was 
preparing  his  report  on  "Weights  and  Measures,"  which 
has  since  his  death  become  so  famous  in  the  scientific 
world,  he  bitterly  complained  that,  at  Washington,  he 
could  find  no  kindred  mind  to  whom  he  could  confide  his 
perplexities  and  from  whom  he  could  draw  a  stimulant. 
In  the  same  way,  when  I  came  to  editing  the  philosophical 
essays  of  my  brother,  I  acutely  felt  the  lack  of  a  kindly 
scientist,  to  whom  I  could  go  to  guard  me  against  my  own 
imcompetence  and  blunders.  At  length  Mr.  Ford  sug- 
gested that  I  should  apply  to  Professor  Bumstead  of 
Yale,  to  whom  he  intimated  that  he  thought  my  brother 
had  submitted  his  manuscript  years  ago,  before  his 
illness.  I  greedily  seized  upon  the  hint,  and  Professor 
Bumstead  not  only  read  the  papers  I  sent  him  with  the 


X  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

utmost  kindness,  but  actually  took  the  trouble  to  visit 
me  at  Quincy,  and  talk  my  problems  over  with  me  after 
dinner,  in  my  own  house.  I  need  not  say  that  the  pro- 
fessor entirely  relieved  my  mind,  and  that  from  the  day 
of  his  visit  I  have  had  no  fear  that  Henry's  meaning  shall 
be  deformed  by  my  negligence  or  ignorance.  His  papers, 
as  they  are  presented,  are  the  accurate  expression  of 
his  thought.  As  an  editor  my  responsibiUty  ends  there. 
And  this  brings  me  to  my  obligation  to  my  old  friend 
Mr.  Worthington  Ford  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society.  As  the  public  perhaps  knows  to  its  cost,  I 
have,  during  the  past  quarter  of  a  century,  now  and  then 
pubUshed  books,  and  in  my  typographical  and  other 
difficulties,  I  have  not  hesitated  to  victimize  Mr.  Ford 
ruthlessly,  to  my  incapacity  or  convenience.  And  Mr. 
Ford  has  endiu'ed  the  infliction,  Uke  a  good  fellow  and  a 
good  friend  to  Henry  and  me.  In  the  present  emergency 
I  apphed  to  Mr.  Ford  at  once,  and  with  absolute  success. 
Without  his  knowledge  of  my  brother's  library,  I  could 
not  have  presented  the  last  corrections  Henry  made  in  the 
papers  which  I  now  submit,  nor  should  I  have  known 
enough  to  apply  to  Professor  Bumstead  without  whom  I 
should  hardly  have  dared  to  venture  on  my  task.  But 
Mr.  Ford's  kindness  did  not  stop  here,  by  any  means.  He 
it  was  who  knew  about,  and  secured,  the  last  annotations 


INTRODUCTORY    NOTE  XI 

which  my  brother  made  to  his  "Letter  to  Teachers," 
and  he  it  was  who  has  read  the  proof,  and  has  taken  care 
that  all  Henry's  citations  of  authorities,  in  various  lan- 
guages, are  correct  in  the  text.  More  than  this :  he  offered 
to  prepare,  and  has  prepared,  the  index  for  me.  I  need 
not  say  how  much  better  his  work  is  than  mine  would 
have  been,  for  making  an  index  is  an  art,  which  displays 
the  book,  and  Mr.  Ford,  as  all  know  who  know  anything, 
is  the  leading  authority  on  such  work,  in  America  if  not 
in  the  world,  as  I  incline  very  strongly  to  think.  There- 
fore, I  have  consented  to  accept  his  kind  and  generous 
offers,  although  by  so  doing  I  have  shirked  my  own  share 
of  my  task.    The  public,  however,  gains. 

And  so  I  come  to  my  last  and,  it  may  be,  my  chiefest 
obhgation.  When  it  was  proposed  that  I  should  pubUsh 
my  brother's  philosophical  remains,  with  an  introduction, 
I  Ughtly  assented,  not  appreciating  the  gravity  of  the 
work  before  me,  nor  the  paucity  of  time  in  which  to  do  it. 
For  the  publishers  insisted  that  I  should  be  ready  before 
the  yeai*  closed,  else  the  book  would  lose  its  interest. 
So  I  began  in  April,  but  I  soon  realized  my  error.  I  was 
not  writing,  in  any  sense,  a  biography;  but  no  author, 
especially  no  philosopher,  can  be  understood,  unless  his 
works  be  laid  before  the  public  with  such  a  sketch  of  his 
environment  and  his  inheritance  as  shall  make  intelligible 


XU  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

the  forces  social,  economic  and  family,  which  produced 
him.  Least  of  all  could  this  be  done  with  so  complex  a 
creature  as  was  my  brother  Henry. 

And,  as  I  worked,  my  task  grew  upon  me  until  I  per- 
ceived that  I  could  never  hope  to  put  Henry  in  his  true 
place  in  modem  intellectual  development,  unless  I  went 
back  to  the  foundation  of  the  Republic,  if  not  to  the 
Reformation.  But  to  do  so  would  require  a  bulky  volume 
unfit  to  prefix  to  such  seemingly  slender  essays  as  these ; 
besides  being  foreign  to  what  the  publishers  wanted. 

Thus  hampered,  I  sought  to  compress ;  and  I  made  sad 
work  of  it,  the  more  so  as  I  neared  my  limit  of  time.  In 
June  the  end  came,  and  I  despaired.  I  realized  that  I 
could  not  print  what  I  had  produced;  it  was  disjointed 
and  incohesive  beyond  tolerance.  In  this  dilemma  I 
turned,  to  my  old  friend  Mrs.  Jones  of  New  York,  who, 
besides  having  for  many  years  advised  some  of  the  chief 
publishing  houses  of  New  York  as  to  the  relative  worth  of 
proposed  manuscripts,  and  thereby  having  acquired  a 
vast  experience  in  what  the  public  demands,  had  been 
for  half  a  lifetime  intimate  with  both  Henry  and  me. 

Much  perplexed,  I  laid  my  manuscript  before  her,  say- 
ing, "This  fragment  is  bad;  I  cannot  publish  it  as  it 
stands,  but  I  know  not  how  to  better  it."  What  should 
I  do?    In  the  kindest  way  in  the  world  she  read  my 


'      INTRODUCTORY    NOTE  Xlli 

failure  over  more  than  once,  and  then  she  said  to  me, 
"Your  'Introduction'  is  bad,  I  agree,  but  it  may  not  be 
irreclaimable."  And  she  made  me  some  suggestions. 
These  I  followed  as  well  as  time  permitted,  and  now  I 
have  it  much  on  my  mind  to  tell  any  possible  future 
readers  of  this  book  that,  if  they  shall  find,  at  the  end  of 
their  perusal  of  the  volume,  they  retain  in  their  minds 
any  clear  conception  of  the  figures  I  introduce,  or  of 
the  work  they  tried  to  do,  or  of  the  part  they  sought  to 
play,  in  the  society  in  which  they  lived,  they  will  owe 
their  concept  far  more  to  her  than  to  me.  My  grand- 
father in  especial  will,  if  I  shall  succeed,  live,  as  it  were 
again,  but  in  a  new  fight,  because  of  her  sympathy  with 
and  comprehension  of  his  most  fervent  ambitions,  his 
efforts  and  his  disasters,  ending  in  his  death,  —  a  martjrr 
to  his  belief  in  God,  education,  and  science. 

Bbooks  Adams. 

QUINCT, 

2d  September,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

Introductory  Note       .        .'...,.  v 

The  Heritage  of  Henry  Adams 1 

The  Tendency  of  History 125 

A  Letter  to  American  Teachers  of  History   .        .  137 

The  Problem 140 

TheSolutioiis 209 

The  Rule  of  Phase  applied  to  History    .        .        .  267 


XV 


THE  DEGRADATION   OF  THE 
DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS 

TAKEN  for  all  in  all,  my  brother  Henry  was  distinctly 
the  most  cultivated  and  stimulating  man,  of  my  own 
generation,  whom  I  ever  knew  intimately.  I  owe  more 
to  his  than  to  any  other  mind,  including  that  of  my  father, 
and  I  can  say  no  more.  Yet  none  of  us  is  quite  perfect, 
and  I  must  frankly  admit  that  Henry  had  certain  intellec- 
tual peculiarities  without  allowing  for  which  I  deem  it 
impossible  to  fully  appreciate  either  the  work  he  did  or 
his  way  of  doing  it. 

And,  to  begin  with,  Henry  was  never,  I  fear,  quite  frank 
with  himself  or  with  others ;  certainly  he  was  not  with  me, 
and  yet  I  fancy  that  I  was,  in  some  respects,  perhaps  his 
most  intimate  friend.  I  know  well  that  he  was  mine; 
that  I  valued  his  opinion  more  than  that  of  any  one  on 
earth,  if  I  could  only  get  it,  and  that  I  would  go  far  to 
obtain  it.  Still,  even  with  me,  Henry  was  always  shy 
and   oversensitive   and    disUked   disagreeable   subjects. 


2     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Hence  he  would  surround  himself  with  different  defences, 
all  of  them  calculated  to  repel  tactless  advances,  and  on 
these  defences  few  of  us  cared  to  intrude.  Personally  I 
at  least,  always  avoided  them. 

One  of  these  was  that,  when  his  wife  died,  in  1884,  he 
insisted  that  he  also  died  to  the  world.  In  plain  English, 
business  bored  him,  and  he  threw  all  such  details  on  us 
vulgarians  who  were,  in  his  judgment,  fit  for  no  better. 
Probably  he  was  right.  Also  he  dearly  loved  paradox,  and 
nothing  amused  him  more  than  propounding  something 
which  he  knew  would  startle  his  guests  or  rouse  in  them 
the  spirit  of  contradiction.  Some  of  these  paradoxes  he 
has  related  in  his  "Education."  Perhaps  his  favorite, 
and  the  one  he  was  always  venting  on  me  to  see  how  I 
would  take  it,  was  the  proposition  that  the  man,  especially 
the  soldier,  is  a  coarse  brute,  and  the  woman  intellec- 
tually his  superior ;  whence  he  deduced  his  peculiar  cult 
of  the  Virgin,  as  an  ideal  of  intellect  and  not  of  sex,  which 
I  admit,  to  me,  rather  deforms  Mont  Saint  Michel  and 
Chartres,  when  carried  to  the  extreme  to  which  he  some- 
times carried  it.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  I  appre- 
ciated the  problem  he  had  in  mind,  and  which  he  wished  to 
discuss,  —  the  dissolution  of  the  modern  family.  On  that 
head  he  was  serious,  and,  so  I  suppose,  are  we  all.  And 
the  more  we  reflect  on  this  subject,  the  more  overshadow- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS        3 

ing  it  grows  and  the  more  alarming,  not  to  say  terrifying, 
it  becomes.    At  all  events  to  me. 

For  my  part,  I  have  for  the  last  twenty  years  at  least, 
contemplated  the  domestic  relations,  as  a  lawyer,  with 
consternation.  Henry,  on  the  whole,  was  always  incUned 
to  be  impatient  with  my  legal  theories,  but  in  this  matter 
he  would  listen  to  me.  "You  are  by  way  of  being  an 
archaeologist,"  I  would  say  to  him, ''  and  I  want  to  know 
whether  in  all  your  reading  you  have  ever  encountered  the 
man  who  could  explain  the  origin  of  the  family,  and  how 
it  came  to  cohere  ?  I  assume  that  long  before  the  ice  cap 
shrank  from  off  this  northern  continent  civilization,  such 
as  it  was,  rested  on  the  family,  and  that  it  always  had  so 
rested.  All  our  legal  notions,  which  are  of  consequence,  are 
derived  thence.  Of  that  I  am  sure.  Such  conceptions, 
for  example,  as  the  right  to  hold  private  property,  the  law 
of  inheritance,  the  title  to  property  itself,  and  more  than 
this  the  right  to  personal  safety  as  developed  in  the  crim- 
inal law.  Moreover  the  family  system  is  the  creation  of 
the  woman  rather  than  that  of  the  man.  The  man  has 
wandered.  He  has  been  the  soldier,  the  sailor,  the  hunter, 
the  fisher,  the  trader,  and  the  herdsman.  All  of  these 
are  occupations  more  or  less  dangerous,  and  which  exact 
absences  from  home.  The  woman,  on  the  contrary,  has 
lived  at  home  and  has  cared  for  the  children.    Thus  she 


4     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

has  acted  as  the  social  cement,  and  she  has  sustained  the 
arch  on  which  the  social  fabric  has  rested.  And  now, 
behold,  the  woman  has  renounced  her  job,  she  is  ashamed 
of  her  sex,  and  I  know  not  how  man  can  replace  her.  One 
sex  alone  cannot  vivify  a  civilization.    What  do  you  say  ? ' ' 

Henry  could  answer  the  question  no  more  than  I,  but 
he  loved  to  play  with  it.  I  never  said,  by  the  way,  or 
even  intimated  that  the  American  woman  is  more  of  a 
failure  than  another.  My  thesis  was  that  all  women, 
under  modern  conditions,  ceased  automatically  to  be 
cohesive.     Henry  sought  to  amplify  the  problem. 

He  has  told  us  in  his  memoirs,  with  what  gusto  he 
would  ask  some  woman  sitting  near  him,  at  his  own  table, 
why  the  American  woman  was  a  failure.  He  knew 
perfectly  well  what  he  wished  to  imply  and  the  response 
he  sought  to  elicit,  but  to  have  explained  himself  would 
have  spoiled  his  fun.  If  he  had  said  that,  in  these  latter 
days,  the  woman  has  become  volatilized  so  excessively 
that  she  wanders  more  freely  and  constantly  than  does 
the  man,  and  therefore  rather  acts  as  a  dissolvent  than 
as  a  cement,  he  might  have  been  forced  into  a  lecture 
on  jurisprudence,  which  would  have  been  intolerable. 
Therefore  he  sat  quiet,  grinned,  and  listened  to  what  the 
women  said.  Nor  was  I  ever  myself  quite  sure  how 
much  he  believed  in  his  own  paradoxes.     He  certainly 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS        5 

believed  that  the  family  tie  was  weakening  and  that  the 
woman  was  volatilizing;  but  touching  her  intellectual 
superiority  it  was  another  matter.  He  did  believe  in 
the  superior  energy  of  the  maternal  instinct,  but  the 
inference  presumably  was  that,  with  the  American  woman 
in  especial,  precisely  in  proportion  as  she  increased  her 
independence,  she  diminished  her  weight  and  her  im- 
portance in  the  social  scale.  She  separated  into  a  finite 
atom,  and  ceased  to  be  the  heart  of  the  social  unit. 

Most  of  us  would  readily  have  admitted  so  much,  but 
to  have  stopped  there  would  have  spoiled  sport,  so  he 
insisted  on  being  taken  quite  seriously.  He  always  re- 
minded me  of  the  story  we  boys  used  to  have  in  college 
about  Professor  Benjamin  Peirce,  who  was  sometimes 
obscure  to  us  youngsters.  One  day  when  lecturing  at 
the  blackboard  he  casually  observed  that  an  equation, 
which  he  wrote  down,  "obviously"  was  the  equivalent 
of  another,  which  he  proceeded  also  to  write  down  before 
us.  An  undergraduate,  rather  bolder  than  the  rest,  or 
possibly  more  intelligent,  having  watched  with  bewilder- 
ment, ventured  to  interrupt  with,  "I  beg  pardon,  pro- 
fessor, but  I  don't  think  I  quite  follow."  "Don't  you? " 
said  Benny,  kindly  but  rather  scornfully.  "Can  you  then 
follow  this?"  Whereupon  he  filled  two  boards  with 
formulae.    And  so  it  was  with  Henry.    I  used  to  sit  and 


6     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

,  listen  with  amusement  almost  equal  to  his  own.  But 
I  think  in  his  "Education"  he  has  carried  his  joke,  at 
times,  perhaps  a  little  too  far  for  his  own  fame. 

For  instance,  he  poses,  more  or  less  throughout  his 
book,  as  having  been  a  failure  and  a  disappointed  man. 
He  was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other,  as  he  knew  well. 
He  was  not  a  failure,  for  he  succeeded,  and  succeeded 
brilliantly,  in  whatever  he  undertook,  where  success  was 
possible ;  and  he  was  not  disappointed,  for  the  world 
gave  him  everything  he  would  take.  He  would  not  have 
touched  office  in  any  form,  had  it  been  offered.  He 
valued  his  liberty  and  his  perfect  independence  too  much 
to  part  with  it  at,  what  he  would  have  thought,  so  vile 
a  price.  What  he  really  cared  for,  as  he  has  intimated 
in  his  "Education,"  was  social  consideration,  and  this 
he  had  wherever  he  chose  to  live.  No  man  could  have 
been  more  petted  than  he  at  Cambridge.  I  know,  for 
I  lived  with  him.  But  he  soon  tired  of  Cambridge  be- 
cause Cambridge  did  not  socially  amuse  him.  So  pretty 
soon  after  his  marriage,  he  and  his  wife  moved  to  Wash- 
ington, where  they  lived  contentedly  until  her  death; 
when  he  began  wandering  again.  Finally  he  cast  anchor 
in  Paris,  which  suited  him  best  of  all,  I  think,  as  he  aged ; 
and  it  was  in  these  latter  years  that  I  was  most  intimate 
with  him.    It  was  in  these  later  years,  also,  that  he  be- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS        7 

came  absorbed  in  his  philosophy  wherein  he  was  intensely 
serious,  and  it  is  largely  because  I  think  that  he  has  hardly 
done  justice  to  this  side  of  his  character  that  I  have 
written  this  preface,  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  counterpoise, 
as  it  were,  to  his  ''Education,"  where  he  has  loved  to 
dilate  on  what  he  thought  more  amusing. 

Indeed,  to  speak  the  truth,  I  rather  tried  to  avoid 
his  Ughter  social  circle,  a  disposition  which  I  think  he 
noticed  and  allowed  for.  And  I  have  even  conjectured 
that,  because  of  this  tendency  of  mine,  he  chose  a  moment 
when  he  was  in  Washington  and  I  in  Quincy  to  send  me 
the  following  essay  on  "Phase,"  for  my  opinion,  instead 
of  keeping  it  for  one  of  my  visits  to  his  house,  and  talk- 
ing it  over  with  me  there.  At  all  events  it  happened 
that,  soon  after  I  had  read  it  and  warmly  approved  it 
and  urged  him  to  publish  it,  he  was  stricken  with  the 
illness  which  incapacitated  him  for  work,  and  thence- 
forward I  heard  no  more  of  * '  Phase. ' '  I  took  it  for  granted 
that  he  felt  unequal  to  putting  "Phase"  through  the 
press,  even  were  he  satisfied  with  the  form  in  which  it 
stood,  which  I  doubted,  for  Henry  stickled  for  form. 
Therefore  in  bringing  it  out  as  he  left  it  eight  years  ago, 
I  am  acting  as  his  trustee,  and  I  have  definite  ideas  of 
what  my  duty  is  toward  such  a  trust. 

In  the  first  place  I  should  try  to  show  him,  as  nearly 


8  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

as  may  be,  as  he  appeared  to  me  in  those  days  when  we 
discussed  these  questions ;  though,  unhappily,  I  can  give 
to  those  who  never  knew  him  no  conception  of  his  sug- 
gestiveness  nor  of  his  power.  But  above  all  I  should 
seek  to  make  others  feel,  as  he  always  made  me  feel, 
that  he  never  trifled  with  what  were  to  both  of  us  serious 
subjects,  dealing  as  they  mostly  did,  either  with  the  hves 
of  our  predecessors  or  with  our  own  future.  A  very 
large  part  of  this  time  I  was  busy  with  sundry  books  of 
my  own  which  have  since  appeared,  but  during  another 
portion  I  was  occupied  with  a  memoir  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  which  I  then  expected  to  pubhsh  and  whose 
chapters  I  sent  to  Henry  for  his  revision,  as  I  finished 
them.  In  reply  Henry  returned  me  notes  and  letters 
which  would  almost  fill  a  volume  by  themselves,  and 
which  gave  me  abundant  food  for  meditation.  The 
upshot  of  it  all  was  that  I  decided  to  suppress  the  book 
in  spite  of  Henry's  remonstrances. 

And  now  as  I  look  back  through  the  vista  of  a  dozen 
years  and  in  the  Ught  of  these  two  essays,  I  am  more 
certain  than  ever  that  I  was  right.  I  am  clear  that 
neither  Henry  nor  I,  when  I  was  writing  those  chapters, 
had  as  yet  come  to  the  point  at  which  we  could  alto- 
gether appreciate  our  ancestor.  John  Quincy  Adams 
was  not  only  a  complex  man,  who  stood  at  least  a  genera- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS        9 

tion  ahead  of  his  time,  but  he  was  a  scientist  of  the  first 
force.  The  same  problems  vexed  him  as  he  grew  old, 
which  have  vexed  Hem*y  and  me  now  for  all  our  later 
lives,  and  it  may  well  be  that  my  attempt  to  write  my 
grandfather's  story  may  have  stimulated  Henry  to  com- 
pose these  essays.  But  whether  it  did  or  did  not,  the 
same  train  of  thought  and  manner  of  thinking  is  obvious 
enough  in  the  older  and  in  the  younger  generation,  and 
what  is  most  remarkable  is  the  persistence  of  the  same 
caste  of  intelUgence  in  the  grandfather  and  grandson, 
the  scientific  mixed  with  the  political,  which  made  the 
older  man  reject  with  horror  a  scientific  theory  forced 
upon  him  by  circumstances,  which  the  younger  man 
has  accepted,  if  not  with  approbation,  at  least  with 
resignation,  and  at  so  relatively  short  an  interval  of  time. 

On  February  18,  1909,  Henry  wrote  me  a  very  long 
letter,  from  which  I  extract  the  following  paragraph, 
only  because  it  expresses  the  view  which  I  wish  to  ac- 
centuate, and  because  it  bears  quite  as  strongly  on  Henry's 
then  attitude  of  mind  and  his  subsequent  development, 
as  it  does  on  that  of  J.  Q.  Adams. 

"No  one  with  the  intelligence  of  an  average  monkey 
will  try  to  tell  a  story  without  leading  up  to  its  point. 
Your  tragedy  will  be  indicated  as  it  is  in  the  lives  of  us  all, 
by  the  chief  failure,  which  is,  in  your  case,  the  Presidency. 


10     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

To  me,  the  old  gentleman's  Presidency  appears  always 
as  lm"id,  —  which  is  not  the  impression  made  on  me  by 
his  father's  defeat,  —  and  I  see  the  age  of  Andrew  Jack- 
son and  the  cotton  planters  much  as  I  see  the  age  of 
the  Valois  or  Honorius,  —  that  is,  with  profound  horror." 

And  touching  the  episode  of  the  Presidency,  Henry 
was,  in  my  opinion,  perfectly  right.  The  Presidency 
was  the  tragedy  of  our  grandfather's  life  because  it  in- 
jected into  his  mind  the  first  doubt  as  to  whether  there 
were  a  God,  and  whether  this  life  had  a  purpose. 

That  from  the  moment  of  his  defeat,  in  1828,  his  life 
took  the  form  of  a  tragedy  was  through  no  fault  of  his, 
but  because,  by  the  nature  of  human  affairs,  he  was  forced, 
by  brtter  experience,  to  admit  that  science  and  educa- 
tion offer  no  solution  to  our  difficulties,  but  possibly 
on  the  contrary  aggravate  them.  In  short,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  at  the  opening  of  his  Presidency,  fell  into  the 
vortex  of  the  movement  which  is  now,  apparently,  only 
culminating,  and  of  which  the  Reformation  itself  was 
the  prelude.  He  himself,  with  the  knowledge  at  hand, 
could  not  see  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  as  we  can. 
But  he  was  conscious  of  the  movement,  and  the  uncon- 
scious thought  stimulated  thereby,  which  harassed  him, 
may  still  be  read  in  his  prayers  to  God  for  defence  against 
his  own  mind,  as  he  neared  the  end. 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  HENRY  ADAMS       11 

So  far  as  Henry  himself  is  concerned  I  take  it  that  in 
1909  when  he  was  writing  to  me  on  his  grandfather,  he 
still  took  the  conventional  view  of  the  man,  if  I  may 
call  it  so.  That  is  to  say,  he  considered  that  John  Quincy 
Adams  had  been  a  political  man,  actuated  by  ordinary 
political  feelings;  whereas  I  believe  him  to  have  been 
an  idealistic  philosopher  who  sought  with  absolute  dis- 
interestedness to  put  the  Union  upon  a  plane  of  civiliza- 
tion which  would  have  averted  the  Civil  and  might  have 
altered  the  complexion  of  the  recent  War ;  who  failed,  as 
all  men  must  fail  who  harbor  such  a  purpose,  and  who 
almost  with  his  last  breath  resigned  himself  and  his 
ambitions  to  fate.  To  me  the  picture  of  the  old  man 
in  his  last  days,  submitting  to  the  destiny  which  he  could 
not  avert  but  which  he  had  long  seen  approaching,  is 
pathetic,  and  is  not  unlike  that  of  his  grandson  who  has 
written  for  our  contemplation  his  regret  at  the  loss  of 
religious  faith,  and  his  resignation  to  resistless  nature,  in 
"Phase."  The  following  extract,  therefore,  seems  to 
me  hardly  fair.  Doubtless  Henry  would  modify  it  were 
it  to  be  rewritten  now.  Nevertheless  it  is  to  me  highly 
suggestive  and  therefore  worth  quoting. 

"Yet,  setting  my  own  wicked  nature  aside,  this  fa- 
miliar picture  of  the  old  man  in  the  prize  ring,  much  as 
I  love  it,  interests  me  less  than  the  documents  you  quote 


12  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  show  the  steps  of  degradation  that  forced  him  into 
it  against  his  will.  Especially  the  letter  to  Upham  of 
February  2,  1837,  which  is  quite  new  to  me,  has  given 
me  cause  for  much  thought.  As  I  read,  between  its  lines, 
the  bitterness  of  his  failure,  and  the  intensity  of  his  re- 
gret at  having  served  the  Sable  Genius  of  the  South, 
are  immensely  tragic  —  so  much  so  that  he  shrank  from 
realizing  its  whole  meaning  even  to  himself.  From  the 
year  1828,  life  took  to  him  the  character  of  tragedy. 
With  the  same  old  self-mortification  which  he  and  we 
have  all,  more  or  less,  inherited  from  Calvinism,  I  be- 
lieve, if  he  had  read  what  I  have  written  to  you  about 
his  early  life,  he  would  have  beaten  his  breast,  and  cried 
his  culp,  and  begged  the  forgiveness  of  his  God,  al- 
though I  can't  make  much  of  his  God  anyway." 

I  radically  dissent  from  all  this  now  as  I  did  then. 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Heritage  op  Henry  Adams 

I  AM  trying,  throughout  this  Introduction,  to  present 
the  minds  of  these  two  powerful  and  original  men, 
the  grandfather  and  the  grandson,  in  their  true  relation, 
as  they  stood,  often  unconsciously,  first  toward  each  other, 
and  secondly  toward  that  movement  of  democratic  society, 
during  the  past  century,  which  imposed  on  them  the  task 
of  attempting  to  fathom  the  science  and  meaning  of  his- 
tory. Plainly  my  function  would  be  impossible  were  I 
not  to  expose  in  the  first  place,  something  of  the  con- 
straining antecedents  of  both. 

John  Quincy  Adams  appears  to  me  to  be  the  most 
interesting  and  suggestive  personage  of  the  early  nine- 
teenth century,  as  my  brother  Henry  is,  in  his  phi- 
losophy, certainly  one  of  the  most  so  of  the  present 
century;  but  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  elder, 
as  it  is  the  younger,  man  imless  we  begin  by  appreciat- 
ing the  education  and  the  circumstances  which  made 
them  what  they  were.  George  Washington  was  the 
model  and  the  master  of  Adams,  and  George  Washing- 

13      , 


14     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

ton  had  a  constructive  theory,  which  John  Quincy  Adams 
imbibed  and  strove  to  carry  into  effect,  by  which  he  hoped 
to  consolidate  a  vast  American  community  from  which 
slavery  should  be  ehminated  and  which  should  act  as 
a  universal  pacifier.  And  Washington's  topographical 
theory,  on  which  all  else  rested,  was  shortly  this : 

In  his  wanderings  in  early  hfe  in  the  western  wilder- 
ness, Washington  conceived  the  principle  that  a  con- 
solidated community  which  should  have  the  energy  to 
cohere  must  be  the  product  of  a  social  system  resting 
on  converging  highways,  and,  in  the  case  before  him,  those 
highways  must  evidently  be  the  Potomac  and  Ohio 
rivers  connected  by  a  canal.  The  point  at  which  this 
main  trunk  avenue  from  west  to  east  met  the  ocean 
must,  from  the  nature  of  things,  be  somewhere  near  the 
site  he  afterward  chose  for  the  national  capital,  where 
a  great  industrial  development  might  easily  be  stimu- 
lated ;  and  with  an  energetic  industrial  development  of 
their  iron  and  coal,  Maryland  and  Virginia  must  auto- 
matically become  free.  Accordingly  as  early  as  1770 
he  wrote  to  Governor  Johnson  of  Maryland  as  follows : 

"There  is  the  strongest  speculative  proof  in  the  world 
to  me  of  the  immense  advantages  which  Virginia  and 
Maryland  might  derive  (and  at  a  very  small  com- 
parative expense)  by  making  the  Potomac  channel  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       15 

commerce  between  Great  Britain,  and  that  immense 
Territory  .  .  .  [the  Mississippi  Valley]  the  advantages  of 
which  are  too  great,  and  too  obvious,  I  should  think,  to 
become  the  subject  of  serious  debate,  but  which,  through 
ill-timed  parsimony  and  supineness,  may  be  wrested 
from  us  and  conducted  through  other  channels,  .  .  .  How 
difficult  it  will  be  to  divert  it  afterward,  time  only  can 
show."  ^ 

Pushing  his  plan  steadily,  Washington  in  1775  thought 
himself  near  success,  but  when  the  Revolutionary  War 
broke  out  he  had  to  leave  Mount  Vernon  and  take  com- 
mand of  the  army.  Eight  years  of  fighting  only  con- 
firmed his  faith  in  his  plan,  and  after  the  peace  he  had 
reached  the  unalterable  conviction  that  unless  the  west 
could  be  bound  to  the  east  by  practicable  trade  routes 
American  civiUzation  must  sink  in  chaos.  At  that  par- 
ticular moment  the  most  threatening  line  of  cleavage 
lay  along  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  but  no  intelligent 
man  could  doubt  that  the  cohesion  between  the  North 
and  South  was  almost  equally  precarious. 

With  his  usual  good  sense  Washington  turned  to  the 
most  pressing  danger  first  and  also  to  the  one  most  easily 
to  be  averted.  The  chief  danger  of  division  which 
Washington  foresaw  was  that  the  western  coimtry  would 

*  Washington  to  Johnson,  Congressional  Documents,  Ist  Session, 
19th  Congress,  Report  No.  228,  p.  28. 


16  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

be  repelled  by  the  difficulty  of  the  mountain  trails,  but 
would  be  correspondingly  attracted  toward  the  Gulf  by 
the  grade  of  the  water  shed.  Louisiana  then  was,  of 
course,  in  foreign  hands.  Conversely  the  chief  threat 
Washington  perceived  for  the  success  of  his  scheme  was 
competition  by  the  route  of  Lake  Erie  and  the  Hudson, 
but  he  expected  to  enjoy  at  least  a  temporary  advantage 
by  the  British  occupation  of  Niagara,  and  the  other 
strategic  points  on  the  Lakes,  which  would  give  his  canal, 
for  the  time,  a  monopoly ;  and  once  fixed  in  a  given  route 
travel  would  be  measurably  stable. 

Having  reached  these  conclusions  he  obtained  a  charter 
for  his  canal  from  the  Virginia  legislature  in  1785,  and 
thereafter  the  stockholders  elected  him  as  their  president. 
He  knew  well  enough  that  his  first  difficulty  would  be 
with  confficting  jurisdictions  and  this  led  him  to  write 
to  a  number  of  gentlemen  to  meet  at  Mount  Vernon, 
whence  came  by  successive  gradations  the  gathering 
at  Annapolis  and  the  convention  at  Philadelphia,  which 
framed  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  The 
adoption  of  the  Constitution  incidentally  ruined  the 
Potomac  Canal,  since  Washington  was,  as  President  of 
the  Union,  interdicted  from  private  speculations,  and 
there  was  no  one  to  replace  him  as  a  canal  president  in 
Virginia,  while  his  patriotism  caused  him  to  open  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       17 

northern  route,  by  obtaining  the  cession  of  the  posts, 
held  by  Great  Britain,  through  Jay's  treaty. 

Washington's  conception  of  a  national  capital  corre- 
sponded in  magnificence  with  his  plan  for  the  concentra- 
tion of  the  nation.  Built  on  converging  avenues,  it 
was  to  be  adapted  at  once  to  miUtary,  commercial,  ad- 
ministrative, and  educational  purposes,  for  at  its  heart 
was  to  be  organized  the  university  which  was  to  serve 
as  the  brain  of  the  corporeal  system  developed  by  the 
highways.  The  university  was,  in  fine,  to  fix  a  standard 
of  collective  thought.  In  Washington's  judgment  the 
university  could  and  should  be  made  to  be  at  once  the 
most  deUcate,  the  most  pervasive,  and  the  most  ef- 
fective instrument  for  the  amalgamation  of  a  united 
people,  and  he  strongly  urged  it  upon  Congress.  As  he 
himself  said,  his  mind  had  been  unable  to  contemplate 
any  plan  more  hkely  *'to  spread  systematic  ideas  through 
all  parts  of  the  rising  empire"  than  would  such  an  uni- 
versity. And  as  Washington  believed  in  centraUzed 
education  as  essential  to  any  true  national  life,  so  doubt- 
less he  would  have  advocated  collective  highway  con- 
struction had  he  not  himself  been  directly  interested  in 
what  was  to  be,  according  to  him,  the  main  artery  of 
commerce.  Nor  did  Washington's  views  stop  here.  A 
necessary  adjunct  to  the  system  of  development  which 


18     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

he  projected  was  the  rooting  out  of  slavery,  for,  according 
to  him,  nothing  else  could  perpetuate  the  Union,  and 
slavery,  as  Washington  admitted  to  himself,  could  only  ^ 
be  peacefully  abolished  when  it  ceased  to  pay,  since  "the 
motives  which  predominate  most  in  human  affairs  are 
self-love  and  self-interest."  But  slavery  could  only 
cease  to  pay  when  Virginia  became  industrial,  and  this 
was  probably  one  of  the  main  reasons  why  Washington 
advocated  domestic  industry.  Much  relating  to  this 
subject  occurs  in  his  correspondence.  After  he  became 
President  he  grew  more  reticent,  but  he  went  to  the  verge 
of  what  he  thought  proper  in  urging  Governor  Randolph 
to  induce  certain  Englishmen  to  set  up  woollen  mills 
within  the  state.  In  short,  at  this  stage  of  American 
social  development,  or  at  the  time  when  Adams  first 
began  to  take  an  intelligent  interest  in  public  problems, 
most  intelligent  Virginians  deplored  slavery.  George 
Mason  thought  it  a  curse,  degrading  the  population  and 
condemning  the  community  to  agriculture  and  relative 
poverty,  while  Jefferson  and  Wyeth  were  in  substance 
abolitionists,  and  Washington,  as  an  eminent  man  of 
business,  disliked  and  opposed  servile  labor  because  of 
its  wastefulness.  The  difficulty  in  those  days  lay  not 
here,  but  further  south  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia, 

*  Retrospections  of  America,  John  Bernard,  edition  of  1S87,  p.  91. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       19 

who  would  enter  into  no  compact  with  the  North  which 
did  not  guarantee  them  their  property.  Rutledge  of 
South  CaroUna  stated  with  exactness  the  true  southern 
position,  as  it  was  afterward  held  universally  south  of 
the  Potomac  :  "Rehgion  and  humanity  have  nothing  to 
do  with  this  question.  Interest  alone  is  the  governing 
principle  with  nations.  The  true  question  is  whether  the 
Southern  States  shall  or  shall  not  be  parties  to  the  Union." 

Finally  a  bargain  was  struck.  The  North  agreed  that, 
in  computing  the  population  entitled  to  representation 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  and  in  the  Electoral 
College,  slaves  should  be  counted  in  the  ratio  of  three 
fifths  of  their  number,  that  fugitive  slaves  should  be 
surrendered  to  their  owners  wherever  found,  and  that 
the  United  States  should  protect  the  states  against 
domestic  violence. 

Verily,  momentous  issues  hinged  upon  the  success  of 
Washington's  experiment,  for  had  Virginia  developed 
industrially  she  must  have  become  free,  and  with  Virginia 
free  there  could  have  been  no  Civil  War.  But  in  1799 
Washington  died,  leaving  his  scheme  of  converging  high- 
ways embryonic,  and  his  federal  capital,  which  should 
have  been  the  focus  of  American  exchanges,  industry, 
and  thought,  little  better  than  a  wilderness.  And  he 
failed  because  he  could  not  bring  it  about  that  his  canal 


20     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

should,  at  that  precise  moment  of  time,  be  built  by 
government  funds  or,  in  other  words,  collectively.  Also 
by  1804  his  failure  and  the  cause  thereof  had  become 
apparent.  And  it  was  then  that  John  Quincy  Adams 
took  up  the  theory  of  constructive  centralization,  not 
indeed  precisely  at  the  point  at  which  Washington  had 
left  it,  but  with  the  expansion  due  to  the  operation  upon 
the  problem  of  a  profound  scientific  mind.  Adams  could 
not  so  early  understand  that  science  might  defeat  its 
own  intended  end. 

Before  entering  the  Senate  in  1803  Adams  had  probably 
never  reflected  upon  the  relation  of  transportation  to 
civilization,  but  he  could  not  have  dwelt  long  at  what 
Washington  proposed  to  have  made  the  focus  of  western 
vitality  without  observing  the  absence  of  energy  at  the 
heart.  Thus  he  soon  reached  the  same  conclusion  which 
Washington  had  reached  long  before,  that  a  highly  or- 
ganized commimity  could  only  be  the  offspring  of  a 
sound  system  of  highways  and  that  effective  highways 
should  be  built  by  the  State  since,  were  highways  built 
as  a  speculation  by  private  persons,  the  common  welfare 
must  be  subordinated  to  private  profit.  Thus  he  evolved 
his  theory  of  internal  improvements,  which  moulded  his 
whole  later  life. 

Mr.  Adams  said  in  conversation  with  another  member 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       21 

of  Congress,  T.  R.  Mitchell,  in  1831 :  "  I  was  no  worshipper 
of  the  tariff,  but  of  internal  improvement,  for  the  pm-suit 
of  which  by  Congress,  as  a  system,  I  claimed  to  be  the  first 
mover.  It  was  by  a  resolution  which  I  offered  to  the  Sen- 
ate of  the  United  States  on  the  23d  of  February,  1807."  * 

Adams'  resolution  imder  another  name  brought  forth 
Gallatin's  well-known  report,  which  Clay  afterward  ad- 
vocated, but  which  Adams  alone  succeeded  in  formulat- 
ing in  his  message  to  Congress  in  1825,  which  embodied 
this  doctrine,  and  which  was  set  aside  by  Jackson,  but 
which  must  be  read  by  any  one  who  would  understand 
this  phase  of  American  development. 

Most  unfortunately  for  all  concerned  Adams'  connec- 
tion with  internal  improvements  at  this  stage  of  the 
movement  was  short.  A  few  days  after  he  offered  his 
resolution,  the  session  closed.  The  next  June  the  Leopard 
fired  upon  the  Chesapeake;  in  consequence  Adams  voted 
for  the  embargo,  whereupon  he  resigned  from  the  Senate, 
and  in  1809  was  sent  to  Russia  by  Mr.  Madison. 

1  Diary  VIII,  444. 

Resolved,  "That  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  be  directed  to  pre- 
pare and  report  to  the  Senate,  at  their  next  session,  a  plan  for  the 
application  of  such  means  as  are  constitutionally  withiii  the  power  of 
Congress,  to  the  purposes  of  opening  roads,  for  removing  obstructions 
in  rivers,  and  making  canals ;  together  with  a  statement  of  the  under- 
takings of  that  nature  now  existing  within  the  United  States  which, 
as  objects  of  pubUo  improvement,  may  require  and  deserve  the  aid  of 
government." 


22     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

It  is  well  to  observe  that  at  this  period  the  African  slave 
trade  was  suppressed,  which  raised  the  price  of  slaves 
and  thus  tended  to  throw  slave  breeding  upon  the  border 
states,  such  as  Virginia,  making  it  gradually  her  most 
profitable  industry.  Adams  only  returned  in  1817  to 
take  charge  of  the  State  Department,  and  at  once  plunged 
into  the  Florida  controversy,  which  involved  the  defence 
of  Jackson  for  the  execution  of  Arbuthnot  and  Am- 
brister,  and  absolutely  absorbed  his  attention  until  the 
rise  of  the  Missouri  question  in  1819.  Meanwhile,  how- 
ever, the  whole  economic  equilibrium  of  the  country  had 
been  shifted  by  the  appearance  of  the  cotton  gin.  In 
1792  Eli  Whitney,  a  native  of  Massachusetts  and  a 
graduate  of  Yale,  invented  the  cotton  gin,  whose  purpose 
was  to  separate  the  cotton  seed  from  the  fibre,  which  it 
had  been  theretofore  extremely  tedious  and  expensive 
to  do  by  hand.  The  machine  was  a  success  and  though 
Whitney  was  robbed  of  his  invention,  he  revolutionized 
cotton  planting  by  making  it  highly  lucrative,  so  much 
so  that  in  1830  the  crop  reached  one  milhon  bales.  The 
breeding  of  slaves  for  the  cultivation  of  this  cotton  thus 
became  more  profitable  in  Virginia  than  industry  in  iron 
and  coal.  Finally  Virginia  came  to  export  forty  thou- 
sand blacks  annually  for  the  purpose,  and  it  was  then 
that  Mr.  Adams  came,  by  the  pressure  of  events,  to  con- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       23 

sider  the  Missouri  question  which  arose  therefrom. 
His  diary  is  full  of  references  to  it.  In  his  view  the 
whole  complexion  of  western  civilization  turned  upon 
its  right  determination.  Peace  and  war  even  were 
directly  involved,  and  from  the  outset,  as  early  as  Jan- 
uary, 1820,  it  had  fixed  his  attention  and  in  an  aspect 
quite  diverse  from  that  which  had  presented  itself  to 
Washington : 

''The  Missouri  question  has  taken  such  hold  of  my 
feeUngs  and  imagination  that,  finding  my  ideas  con- 
nected with  it  very  numerous,  but  confused  for  want  of 
arrangement,  I.  have  within  these  few  days  begun  to  com- 
mit them  to  paper  loosely  as  they  arise  in  my  mind. 
There  are  views  of  the  subject  which  have  not  yet  been 
taken  by  any  of  the  speakers  or  writers  by  whom  they 
have  been  discussed  —  views  which  the  time  has  not  yet 
arrived  for  presenting  to  the  public,  but  which  in  all 
probabihty  it  will  be  necessary  to  present  hereafter.  I 
take  it  for  granted  that  the  present  question  is  a  mere 
preamble  —  a  title-page  to  a  great  tragic  volume.  I 
have  reserved  my  opinions  upon  it,  as  it  has  been  ob- 
viously proper  for  me  to  do.  The  time  may,  and  I  think 
will,  come  when  it  will  be  my  duty  equally  clear  to  give 
my  opinion,  and  it  is  even  now  proper  for  me  to  begin 
the   preparation   of   myself   for   that   emergency.    The 


24     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

President  thinks  this  question  will  be  winked  away  by 
a  compromise.  But  so  do  not  I.  Much  am  I  mistaken 
if  it  is  not  destined  to  survive  his  pohtical  and  individual 
life  and  mine."  ^ 

Thus  the  problem  was  gradually  assuming  in  the  mind 
of  Adams  both  a  scientific  and  a  religious  aspect,  and  I 
think  that  I  cannot  do  better  than  to  insert  here  the 
letter  to  Mr.  Upham  to  which  Henry  alluded  as  explain- 
ing the  scientific  side  of  his  program.  Mr.  Upham  was 
a  Salem  clergyman  who  had  asked  Mr.  Adams  for  de- 
tails wherewith  to  write  a  notice  of  his  life. 

According  to  Adams'  own  repeated  and  most  solemn  as- 
severations made  to  himself  as  he  came  to  die,  his  highest 
aspiration,  his  dearest  hope,  almost  from  his  youth  up, 
had  been  by  his  sustained  support  of  appUed  science 
to  rank  as  one  of  the  benefactors  of  mankind.  He  ad- 
mitted that  he  had  failed. 

Washington,  2  Feb.,  1837. 
Rev.  Charles  W.  Upham, 
Salem,  Mass. 

My  dear  Sir  : 

I  fear  I  have  done  and  can  do  little  good  in  the  world. 
And  my  life  will  end  in  disappointment  of  the  good  which 
I  would  have  done,  had  I  been  permitted.  The  great 
effort  of  my  administration  was  to  mature  into  a  per- 
manent and  regular  system  the  application  of  all  the 

1  Diary  IV,  502,  January  10,  1820. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       25 

superfluous  revenue  of  the  Union  to  internal  improve- 
ment which  at  this  day  would  have  afforded  high  wages 
and  constant  employment  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
laborers,  and  in  which  every  dollar  expended  would  have 
repaid  itself  fourfold  in  the  enhanced  value  of  the  public 
lands.  With  this  system  in  ten  years  from  this  day  the 
surface  of  the  whole  Union  would  have  been  checkered 
over  with  railroads  and  canals.  It  may  still  be  done 
half  a  century  later  and  with  the  limping  gait  of  State 
legislature  and  private  adventure.  I  would  have  done  it 
in  the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  nation.  I  laid  the 
foundation  of  it  all  by  a  resolution  offered  to  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States  in  1806,  and  adopted  under  another's 
name  (the  Journals  of  the  Senate  are  my  vouchers.)^ 

When  I  came  to  the  presidency  the  principle  of  internal 
improvement  was  swelling  the  tide  of  public  prosperity, 
till  the  Sable  Genius  of  the  South  saw  the  signs  of  his  own 
inevitable  downfall  in  the  unparalleled  progress  of  the 
general  welfare  of  the  North,  and  fell  to  cursing  the  tariff, 
and  internal  improvement,  and  raised  the  standard  of 
free  trade,  nullification,  and  state  rights.  I  fell  and  with 
me  fell,  I  fear  never  to  rise  again,  certainly  never  to  rise 
again  in  my  day,  the  system  of  internal  improvement 
by  means  of  national  energies.  The  great  object  of  my 
life  therefore,  as  applied  to  the  administration  of  the 
government  of  the  United  States,  has  failed.  The  Ameri- 
can Union,  as  a  moral  person  in  the  family  of  nations,  is 
to  live  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  to  cast  away  instead  of 
using  for  the  improvement  of  its  own  condition,  the 
bounties  of  Providence.  ^ 

But,  after  all,  was  there  a  Providence? 

*  It  was  in  fact  presented  on  February  23,  1807,  Diary  VIII,  444. 


26     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

This  must  serve  as  my  exposition  of  Mr.  Adams'  policy 
of  collective  administration  as  a  statesman  and  as  a 
Christian,  which  he  had  evolved  on  the  theory  that  man 
is  a  reasoning  animal  and  that  there  is  a  God  or  a  con- 
scious ruler  of  the  universe,  whom  man  can  intelUgently 
serve  and  with  whom  he  can  covenant.  Assuming  that 
there  was  in  existence  such  a  imiverse  and  such  a  be- 
nevolent God,  Mr.  Adams  went  on  to  explain  as  a 
scientific  fact  that  a  volume  of  energy  lay  stored  within 
the  Union,  which  as  an  administrator  he  could  have  de- 
veloped had  he  been  able  to  work  at  leisure  and  had  he 
been  supported  by  his  Creator.  Also  this  potential 
energy  would  have  raised  the  people  of  this  country 
beyond  the  danger  of  severe  economic  competition, 
practically,  forever.  Such  a  consummation  had,  how- 
ever, been  made  impossible  by  the  growth  of  the  plant- 
ing, or  slave  interest,  permitted  by  the  Almighty,  which 
was  an  offence  to  God.  This  was  a  catastrophe  which 
he  could  never  understand  nor  forget  —  supposing  there 
to  have  been  a  Providence.  The  substance  of  this  ap- 
pears in  the  following  extract  from  a  very  famous  address 
made  by  him  in  1842,  almost  at  the  close  of  his  active 
poUtical  life,  and  when  he  appreciated  that  Civil  War 
was  imminent. 

"The  Southern  or  Slave  party,  outnumbered  by  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  HENRY  ADAMS      27 

free,  are  cemented  together  by  a  common,  intense  in- 
terest of  property  to  the  amount  of  $1,200,000,000  in 
human  beings,  the  very  existence  of  which  is  neither 
allowed  nor  tolerated  in  the  North.  .  .  .  The  total 
abandonment  by  President  Jackson,  of  all  internal  im- 
provement by  the  authority  of  Congress,  and  of  all 
national  protection  to  domestic  industry,  was  a  part  of 
the  same  system,  which,  in  the  message  of  December, 
1832,  openly  recommended  to  give  away  gratuitously 
all  the  public  lands,  and  renounce  forever  all  idea  of 
raising  any  revenue  from  them.  This  was  nullification 
in  its  most  odious  feature.  The  public  lands  are  the 
richest  inheritance  ever  bestowed  by  a  bountiful  Creator 
upon  any  national  community.  All  the  mines  of  gold 
and  silver  and  precious  stones  on  the  face  or  in  the  bowels 
of  the  globe,  are  in  value  compared  to  them,  but  the  dust 
of  the  balance.  Ages  upon  ages  of  continual  progres- 
sive improvement,  physical,  moral,  political,  in  the  con- 
dition of  the  whole  people  of  this  Union,  were  stored  up 
in  the  possession  and  disposal  of  these  lands.  .  .  . 

"I  had  long  entertained  and  cherished  the  hope  that 
these  public  lands  were  among  the  chosen  instruments 
of  Almighty  power,  ...  of  improving  the  condition  of 
man,  by  establishing  the  practical,  self-evident  truth  of 
the  natural  equality  and  brotherhood  of  all  mankind, 


28     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

as  the  foundation  of  all  human  government,  and  by 
banishing  slavery  and  war  from  the  earth.  .  .  .  The 
project  first  proclaimed  by  Andrew  Jackson,  ...  of  giv- 
ing away  the  national  inheritance  to  private  land  jobbers, 
or  to  the  states  in  which  they  he  .  .  .  was  the  consum- 
mation of  the  Maysville  road  veto  pohcy  ...  to  per- 
petuate the  institution  of  slavery  and  its  dominion  over 
the  North  American  Union.  ^ 

"I  have  earnestly  hoped  that  those  states  themselves 
would  at  no  distant  day  abolish  slavery.  My  hopes  of 
these  events  are  not  wholly  abandoned  but  weakened 
and  deferred.  The  interdiction  of  the  African  slave 
trade  has  had  the  unfortunate  effect  of  giving  the  monop- 
oly of  the  slave-breeding  trade  to  Maryland  and  Virginia, 
and  it  is  lamentable  to  see  that  the  most  sordid  of  passions 
has  thus  been  enlisted  on  the  side  of  perpetual  slavery." 

Having  now  explained  in  his  own  words  Mr.  Adams* 
opinions  as  a  statesman  and  as  a  scientist  touching 
national  collective  administrative  development,  we  ap- 
proach what  to  him  was  the  most  vital  of  all  questions, 
and  that  was  the  relation  of  his  policy  of  internal  improve- 
ment to  God.  First  of  all  I  must  premise  that,  as  a 
Christian,  Mr.  Adams  still  at  this  date,  in  theory,  believed, 
and  probably  at  the  time  of  his  election  to  the  presidency 

»  Address  to  Constituents,  Sept.  17,  1842,  pp.  22,  23,  24,  51,  52. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       29 

believed  without  a  doubt,  in  the  existence  of  a  Supreme 
and  omnipotent  Creator  of  the  world,  whose  nature  was 
benign,  and  of  a  "crucified  Saviour"  who  proclaimed 
immortal  hfe  and  who  preached  peace  on  earth,  good-will 
to  men,  the  natural  equality  of  all  mankind,  and  the  law, 
"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  Such  being 
in  general  his  theological  beUef  ,^  he  thus  stated  his  con- 
ception of  the  relation  which  this  divine  principle  bore 
to  his  duty  to  develop  by  all  means  in  his  power  the  re- 
sources of  the  United  States  in  such  a  manner  as  should 
conduce  most  to  the  moral  elevation  and  physical  well- 
being  of  the  whole  people.  Such  a  movement  in  his 
view,  as  I  have  already  shown,  hinged  on  the  scientific 
development  of  internal  resources,  so  that  they  might 
be  utiUzed  without  waste. 

QuiNCY,  13  July,  1837. 
Rev.  J.  Edwards, 

President  of  the  Theological  Seminary,  Andover. 

Rev.  Sir  ; 

.  .  .  The  occasion  naturally  called  for  an  exposition 
of  my  opinions  with  regard  to  the  inconsistency  between 
the  principles  asserted  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
and  the  existence  of  Domestic  slavery.  I  thought  it 
also  a  fitting  occasion  to  state  the  grounds  of  my  belief 
that  the  ultimate  extinguishment  of  slavery  throughout 
the  earth  was  the  great  transcendent  earthly  object  of 
1  Diaxy  XI,  341. 


30  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  mission  of  the  Redeemer.  .  .  .  That  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  was  a  leading  event  in  the  progress  of 
the  gospel  dispensation.  .  .  .  That  its  principles  lead 
directly  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  and  of  war,  and  that 
it  is  the  duty  of  every  free  American  to  contribute  to  the 
utmost  extent  of  his  power  to  the  practical  estabUshment 
of  those  principles.  ... 

The  difficulty  which  Mr.  Adams  encountered,  in  re- 
ducing his  theory  as  a  Christian,  to  practice  may  be  stated 
in  a  nutshell,  and  the  result  to  which  it  led  him  shall  follow 
in  his  own  words. 

Mr.  Adams  as  a  scientific  man  was  a  precursor  of  the 
later  Darwinians  who  have  preached  the  doctrine  of 
human  perfectability,  a  doctrine  in  which  the  modem 
world  has  believed  and  still  professes  to  believe.  Grant- 
ing that  there  is  a  benign  and  onmipotent  Creator  of 
the  world,  who  watches  over  the  fate  of  men,  Adams' 
sincere  conviction  was  that  such  a  being  thinks  according 
to  certain  fixed  laws,  which  we  call  scientific  laws ;  that 
these  laws  may  be  discovered  by  human  intelligence  and 
when  discovered  may  be  adapted  to  human  uses.  And 
if  so  discovered,  adapted,  and  practised  they  must  lead 
men  certainly  to  an  approach  to  perfection,  and  more 
especially  to  the  elimination  of  war  and  slavery.  The 
theory  was  pleasing,  and  since  the  time  of  Mr.  Adams  it 
has  been  generally  accepted  as  the  foimdation  of  Ameri- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       31 

can  education  and  the  corner  stone  of  democracy.  But 
mark  how  far  it  led  Mr.  Adams  astray  in  1828,  and  how 
at  last  it  broke  his  heart.  Eli  Whitney's  cotton  gin  was 
certainly  one  of  the  most  famous  and  successful  of  the 
appUcations  of  science  to  a  supremely  bountiful  gift  of 
God,  in  making  American  cotton  serviceable  and  cheap 
to  the  whole  human  race.  But  it  propagated  slavery, 
it  turned  the  fair  state  of  Virginia  into  an  enormous  slave- 
breeding  farm,  whence  forty  thousand  blacks  were 
annually  exported  to  the  South,  and  thus  inexorably 
induced  the  Civil  War ;  so  with  the  public  lands  which 
Mr.  Adams  would  wilUngly  have  given  his  life  to  save 
for  his  contemporaries  and  their  posterity.  Railroads 
and  canals  raised  the  price  of  these  lands  by  making 
them  accessible.  And  this  is  what  Mr.  Adams  saw  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  in  1838,  and  this  is  his 
comment  on  the  humanizing  effect  of  applied  science. 
It  was  the  triumph  of  Benton  and  Jackson,  of  the  very 
essence  of  evil,  over  him.  ''The  thirst  of  a  tiger  for 
blood  is  the  fittest  emblem  of  the  rapacity  with  which 
the  members  of  all  the  new  states  fly  at  the  public  lands. 
The  constituents  upon  whom  they  depend  are  all  settlers, 
or  tame  and  careless  spectators  of  the  pillage.  They  are 
themselves  enormous  speculators  and  land-jobbers.  It 
were  a  vain  attempt  to  resist  them  here."    This  was 


32     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA^ 

written  on  June  12,  1838,  and  thus  had  the  bargain 
of  Benton  with  the  planters  been  consummated  by  means 
of  apphed  science.^  Such  bargains  were  to  have  been 
anticipated  and  would  have  been  taken  as  a  matter  of 
com^e  by  an  ordinary  political  huckster,  but  Mr.  Adams, 
though  after  his  defeat  in  1828  he  did  practically,  as  he 
states  here,  give  up  the  contest,  because  he  had  ceased 
to  beheve  that  God  supported  him,  never  could  nor  ever 
did  reconcile  himself  to  the  destiny  which  this  betrayal 
by  God  entailed  on  the  world. 

Nevertheless,  it  was  all  the  logical  result  of  competition, 
of  apphed  science,  and  of  education  as  stimulating  social 
ambition,  and  therefore  greed.  As  an  old  man  Mr. 
Adams  sat  in  Congress  and  watched  the  competition 
between  slave  and  free  labor  gathering  the  heat  which 
presaged  a  convulsion,  and  he  confessed  to  himself  that 
"the  conflict  will  be  terrible."  On  the  other  hand  he  had 
loved  his  mother  as  he  never  loved  another  human  being 
on  the  earth.  Come  what  might  he  could  not  surrender 
his  hope  of  immortality.  To  have  been  driven  to  such 
an  admission  would  have  killed  him.  This  internal  con- 
flict forced  him  to  seek  to  sustain  his  sinking  faith  by 
such  pretences  as  he  found  at  hand. 

In  1843  he  was  old,  and  physical  ailments  were  crowd- 

1  "  Memoirs  "  Ix.  235. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       33 

ing  upon  him.  Among  the  worst  of  these  was  catarrh, 
or  "tussis  seniUs"  as  he  called  it,  which  afflicted  him 
much.  One  conmiunion  Sunday  in  March  he  was  kept 
at  home  by  this  cough,  and  he  employed  his  time  in  re- 
cording the  following  reflections  upon  his  past  hfe  and 
his  present  beUef.  It  seems  hardly  credible  that  a  man 
of  hiSb  energy  oi  mind  should  have  admitted  what  a  pang 
so  slight  a  disappointment,  which  at  an  earlier  day  he 
would  have  ignored,  actually  gave  him  as  he  peered  at 
the  end  into  the  gate  of  death. 

"I  have  this  day  been  debarred  by  my  disease  [catarrh] 
from  the  privilege  of  attendance  upon  public  worship, 
and  felt  it  with  deep  mortification.  The  time  has  been, 
chiefly  in  foreign  countries,  when  I  have  too  long  inter- 
mitted the  duty  of  that  attendance.  Of  this  I  charge 
myself  especially  when  in  Holland,  in  Berlin,  in  St. 
Petersburg,  and  last  in  France.  .  .  .  For  this  I  blame  my- 
self ;  but  the  importance  of  regular  attendance  upon  the 
duties  of  the  Christian  Sabbath  in  social  communion  has 
impressed  itself  more  deeply  on  my  mind  in  proportion  as 
I  have  advanced  in  years.  I  had  neglected  to  become  a 
member  of  the  church  till  after  the  decease  of  my  father  — 
another  omission  which  I  now  regret.  I  have  at  all  times 
been  a  sincere  believer  in  the  existence  of  a  Supreme 
Creator  of  the  world,  of  an  immortal  principle  within 


34     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

myself,  responsible  to  that  Creator  for  my  conduct  upon 
earth,  and  of  the  divine  mission  of  the  cruciified  Saviour, 
proclaiming  immortal  Ufe  and  preaching  peace  on  earth, 
good  will  to  men,  the  natural  equality  of  all  mankind, 
and  the  law,  *Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.' 
Of  all  these  articles  of  faith,  all  resting  upon  the  first,  the 
existence  of  an  Omnipotent  Spirit,  I  entertain  invol- 
untary and  agonizing  doubts,  which  I  can  neither  silence 
nor  expel,  and  against  which  I  need  for  my  own  comfort 
to  be  fortified  and  sustained  by  stated  and  frequent  op- 
portunities of  receiving  religious  admonition  and  in- 
struction. I  feel  myself  to  be  a  frequent  sinner  before 
God,  and  I  need  to  be  often  admonished  of  it,  and  exhorted 
to  virtue.  .  .  .  This  forms  a  regular  portion  of  my 
habits  of  life,  and  I  cannot  feel  the  privation  of  it  without 
painful  sensibiHty."  ^ 

Mr.  Adams  considered  his  life  a  failure ;  and  from  his 
point  of  view  it  was  a  failure ;  and  in  the  same  way  and 
by  a  parity  of  reasoning  Henry  considered  his  life  a 
failure,  because  he  had  not  accomplished  what  at  the 
outset  he  hoped.  For  example,  John  Quincy  Adams 
wrote  only  a  few  days  before  the  stroke  of  paralysis  which 
ended  his  work :  "If  my  intellectual  powers  had  been  such 
as  have  been  sometimes  committed  by  the  Creator  of 

1  Diary  XI,  340,  341. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       35 

man  to  single  individuals  of  the  species,  my  diary  would 
have  been,  next  to  the  Holy  Scriptures,  the  most  precious 
and  valuable  book  ever  written  by  human  hands,  and  I 
should  have  been  one  of  the  greatest  benefactors  of  my 
country  and  of  mankind.  I  would,  by  the  irresistible 
power  of  genius  and  the  irrepressible  energy  of  will  and 
the  favor  of  Almighty  God,  have  banished  war  and 
slavery  from  the  face  of  the  earth  forever.  But  the  con- 
ceptive  power  of  mind  was  not  conferred  upon  me  by 
my  Maker,  and  I  have  not  improved  the  scanty  portion' 
of  His  gifts  as  I  might  and  ought  to  have  done."  Then 
he  adds,  ''May  I  never  .  .  .  mm-mur  at  the  dispensations 
of  Providence."  In  other  words  he  was  disappointed  be- 
cause he  was  not  supernatm-al.  And  yet,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  Mr.  Adams  had  one  of  the  most  powerful  scientific 
minds  of  his  age,  and  of  this  he  has  left  a  record  in  his 
report  on  weights  and  measures.  Among  my  father's 
sons  not  one  save  Henry  had  any  aptitude  for  science ; 
the  others  were  ordinary  lawyers  or  men  of  affairs,  but 
in  Henry  the  instinct  which  he  inherited  from  his  grand- 
father showed  itself  strongly  and  early.  Henry  in  one 
of  the  most  charming  passages  in  his  "Education"  has 
told  us  how  one  day  in  London  in  1867,  when  he  was  not 
yet  thirty,  Sir  Charles  Lyell  asked  him  to  review  his 
"Principles"  for  him  in  America,  and  afterward,  in  token 


36     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  his  appreciation  and  gratification  at  Henry's  work, 
left  him  his  field  compass.  Now  Sir  Charles,  whom  I, 
as  a  child,  very  well  remember  as  a  dear  friend  of  my 
mother,  though  a  most  amiable  and  delightful  old  gentle- 
man, was  by  no  means  careless  of  his  own  reputation 
and  was  more  particulariy  anxious  to  be  well  presented 
to  the  American  pubUc.  Hence  the  compliment  to 
Henry  was  the  more  flattering  coming  from  so  old  a 
man,  then  standing  at  the  apex  of  scientific  fame,  toward 
a  young  one  who  had  as  yet  made  not  even  a  shadowy 
reputation  in  the  hterary  world.  Nor  had  Henry  any 
education  in  geology  save  what  he  gave  himself.  But 
Sir  Charles,  to  his  great  credit,  recognized  thus  promptly 
Henry's  intelligence  and  industry.  How  well  the  work 
was  done  any  one  may  see  by  reading  the  paper  in  the 
North  American  Review.  And  so  it  was  with  John  Quincy 
Adams  from  whom  he  inherited  his  talent. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Heritage  of  Henry  Adams 

WHEN  Mr.  Adams  returned  home  in  1817  to  take 
charge  of  the  State  Department,  he  fomid  a 
resolution  of  the  Senate  awaiting  him  dated  March  3, 
1817,  directing  the  Secretary  of  State  to  ''prepare  and 
report  to  the  Senate  a  statement  relative  to  the  regula- 
tions and  standards  for  weights  and  measures  in  the 
several  states,  and  relative  to  the  proceedings  in  foreign 
countries,  for  establishing  uniformity  in  weights  and 
measures,  together  with"  suggestions  as  to  the  course 
proper  to  be  adopted  by  the  United  States. 

Most  Secretaries  of  State  have  been  content  to  dis- 
charge, with  what  credit  they  might,  the  duties  of  the 
office,  and  have  found  those  ample  to  absorb  their  energy, 
but  Mr.  Adams  was  a  man  of  a  different  kidney,  and  an 
estimate  by  the  youngest  of  his  grandsons,  who  has  him- 
self become  old,  of  the  activities  of  his  grandfather  con- 
trasts strangely  with  his  ancestor's  morbid  depreciation 
of  himself. 

One  of  his  expedients  for  finding  time  was  to  rise  at 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning.    With  this  explanation  it 

37 


38     THE  DEGRADATION  OP  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

may,  perhaps,  be  easier  to  understand  how  he  succeeded 
in  writing  his  report  while  holding  ofi&ce  as  Secretary  of 
State  at  a  period  of  high  pressure  in  public  business. 
For  it  was  during  this  interval  that,  among  other  things, 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  formulated,  that  Jackson 
nearly  brought  us  into  war  with  England  by  his  execu- 
tion of  Arbuthnot  and  Ambrister,  and  that  the  despatch 
to  Erving  was  written.  And  in  those  days  Mr.  Adams 
had  little  help  even  in  the  commonest  drudgery.  He  had 
no  private  secretary,  much  less  a  stenographer.  He 
wrote  every  word  himself,  often  copying  the  more  im- 
portant papers  with  a  hand  palsied  by  writer's  cramp. 
At  last  in  October,  1819,  he  resolutely  got  to  work.  He 
was  confronted  with  the  resolution  of  the  Senate  direct- 
ing the  Secretary  of  State  to  report  upon  the  action  taken 
by  other  nations  regarding  weights  and  measures  and 
to  suggest  a  policy  for  the  United  States. 

Mr.  Adams  had  a  pecuhar  mind.  It  concentrated 
slowly  but  when  centred  it  acted  with  extreme  intensity. 
Once  absorbed  he  lapsed  into  a  species  of  trance  in  which 
he  forgot  all  else.  But  the  transition  from  politics  to 
science  was  slow  and  painful. 

Among  the  responsibilities  of  government  few  are 
graver  than  the  regulation  of  weights  and  measures,  and 
this  responsibility  increases  with  every  advance  in  trade, 


THE   HERITAGE   OF  HENRY  ADAMS  39 

in  wealth,  in  applied  science,  or  in  invention.  The 
coinage  is  a  matter  of  weights ;  trade  turns  on  measures, 
while  the  standardization  of  machinery  presupposes  ab- 
solute accuracy  of  measurement.  One  of  the  chief 
glories  of  the  French  Revolution  was  the  perfecting  of 
the  metric  system.  Now  that  the  metric  system  has 
been  long  estabhshed  we  can  with  difficulty  reaUze  the 
confusion  which  its  introduction  caused.  As  Mr.  Adams 
observed  in  his  report:  "The  substitution  of  an  entire 
new  system  of  weights  and  measures,  instead  of  one  long 
estabhshed  and  in  general  use,  is  one  of  the  most  arduous 
exercises  of  legislative  authority.  There  is  indeed  no 
difficulty  in  enacting  and  promulgating  the  law;  but 
the  difficulties  of  carrying  it  into  execution  are  always 
great,  and  have  often  proved  insuperable." 

To  a  great  degree  the  French  have  always  found  them 
so.  To  this  day  they  have  never  succeeded  in  appljdng 
the  decimal  system  to  time.  "  Weights  and  measures  may 
be  ranked  among  the  necessaries  of  life,  to  every  indi- 
vidual of  human  society.  They  enter  into  the  economical 
arrangements  and  daily  concerns  of  every  family.  They 
are  necessary  to  every  occupation  of  human  industry ;  to 
the  distribution  and  security  of  every  species  of  property ; 
to  every  transaction  of  trade  and  commerce ;  to  the  labors 
of  the  husbandman;    to  the  ingenuity  of  the  artificer; 


40  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA  ^ 

to  the  studies  of  the  philosopher;  to  the  researches  of 
the  antiquarian;  to  the  navigation  of  the  mariner,  and 
the  marches  of  the  soldier ;  to  all  the  exchanges  of  peace, 
and  all  the  operations  of  war."  Suddenly  one  of  the 
chiefest  of  the  family  of  nations  shifted  its  standard,  and 
forthwith  all  other  nations  sought  an  adjustment.  They 
seek  one  still.  Accordingly  many  governments  appointed 
commissions  of  eminent  scientists  to  report  not  only  on 
the  value  of  the  metric  system  itself,  but  upon  the  means 
of  reaching  a  common  standard.  And  these  problems 
have  never  yet  been  satisfactorily  solved.  ParHament 
early  bestirred  itself,  Congress  somewhat  later.  And 
this  was  the  resolve  which  awaited  Mr.  Adams  after  an 
absence  of  eight  years.  He  had  no  commission  with  its 
resources  at  command.  He  was  absolutely  isolated  and 
alone,  and  besides  he  found  the  Department  itself  in  chaos. 
The  confusion  was  in  part  due  to  the  sack  of  Washington, 
but  still  more  to  the  slackness  which  had  prevailed  from 
the  foundation  of  the  government  in  the  filing  of  corre- 
spondence. Plunged  forthwith  in  the  Spanish  turmoil 
which  lasted  from  the  occupation  of  Ameha  Island  in 
1817,  to  the  revolution  which  provoked  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  Mr.  Adams  passed  much  of  his  time  in  hunting 
for  essential  documents,  and  every  practical  man  will 
sjrmpathize  with  his  nervous  irritation  at  the  strain  put 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      41 

upon  him  by  having  to  teach  his  clerks  some  rudiments 
of  order,  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  to  rout  bitter  ad- 
versaries in  front,  and  strengthen  timid  colleagues  be- 
hind. Doing,  besides  his  own  work  as  Secretary,  that  of 
a  common  clerk,  he  was  at  the  mercy  of  such  an  uncon- 
scionable bore  as  the  British  Minister,  Stratford  Canning, 
who  thought  nothing  of  idling  away  three  or  four  hours 
of  a  morning,  at  the  Secretary's  expense. 

After  his  vacation  in  the  summer  of  1819,  Mr.  Adams 
returned  to  Washington  in  October  and  resolutely  attacked 
his  report.  Probably  no  political  conflict  in  which  he  ever 
engaged  wrought  his  nerves  to  so  high  a  tension,  for  in 
science  he  entered  into,  as  it  were,  a  foreign  field  and  one  in 
which  he  felt  much  difl&dence,  as  was  reasonable,  for  the 
difficulties  he  encountered  might  have  discouraged  the  best 
trained  mathematician  and  physicist  in  the  world.  Work- 
ing imder  the  best  conditions  with  every  appliance  and 
vast  Ubraries  at  hand,  the  combined  talent  of  France 
and  England  had  reached  no  satisfactory  conclusion 
touching  the  relation  of  the  foot  to  the  metre.  And 
Adams  had  to  criticise  the  discrepancies  between  the 
various  measiu-ements  of  the  British  pendulum  vibrating 
seconds  in  vacuo.  The  difference  according  to  him  be- 
tween a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  Cap- 
tain Kater  was  an  one  hundred  and  twenty-sixth  part 


42     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA  ^ 

of  an  inch.  Thus  even  in  London  or  Paris  the  investi- 
gator had  much  to  contend  with,  but  without  doubt  no 
considerable  capital  in  the  civilized  world  was  so  bereft 
of  experimental  appliances  as  was  then  Washington, 
which  was  little  better  than  a  poorly  administered  south- 
ern village,  with  all  the  educational  slackness  which  that 
implies.  Nor  had  Adams  the  training  or  experience  to 
be  able  to  make  good  these  deficiencies  from  his  own  t^ 
sources.  Even  his  mathematics  he  had  to  furbish  up 
as  he  went  along.  In  science  he  was  self-educated.  He 
could  neither  invent  new  apparatus,  nor  repair  injured 
pieces.  Hardly  could  he  command  the  use  of  a  chronom- 
eter. Worst  of  all,  he  found  no  kindred  mind  from  which 
he  could  draw  a  stimulant.  Nor  could  he  give  to  his 
work  either  the  best  of  his  time  during  the  day  or  the  best 
days  of  the  year.  The  only  hours  he  could  veritably 
call  his  own  were  from  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  until 
breakfast,  and  those  only  in  summer,  in  hot  weather, 
when  work  was  fatiguing  almost  beyond  endurance. 
In  winter  social  engagements  at  night  prevented  him  from 
rising  so  early,  and  visits  at  the  office  effectually  put  a 
stop  to  serious  concentration  during  the  day.  There- 
fore to  work  consecutively  he  had  to  give  up  his  visit 
to  his  father  at  Quincy  in  August,  which  almost  broke 
the  poor  old  man's  heart,  after  his  wife  had  died,  as  oc- 


'rHE   HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      43 

curred  long  before  1819.  And  thus  John  Quincy  Adams 
passed  all  summer  laboriously  writing  in  Washington, 
though  writing  had  become  beyond  measure  irksome  to 
him  in  the  moist  heat  of  the  Potomac  Valley,  which 
always  debilitated  him. 

For  months  his  diary  is  filled  with  plaints  about  the 
pressure  on  his  time,  and  the  misery  of  trying  to  con- 
centrate his  attention  in  Washington  in  summer,  and 
with  strange  accounts  of  the  rude  experiments  to  which 
he  was  constrained  to  resort  to  test  his  theories.  For 
example,  one  set  of  his  instruments  was  an  old  pair  of 
bank  scales  ''which  belonged  to  the  Branch  of  the  old 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  but  which  having  been  dis- 
used are  not  regulated  and  have  grown  rusty." 

Another  time  he  was  quite  at  a  loss  to  find  out  the  con- 
tent of  an  ordinary  hogshead  of  Bordeaux.  In  hardly 
any  other  city  in  the  world  would  he  have  had  to  do  more 
than  to  ask  at  the  chief  grocer's  counter,  but  in  Washing- 
ton nobody  knew.  These  daily  incidents  illustrate  the 
shifts  to  which  he  was  driven. 

The  whole  diary  is  filled  for  months  with  entries  which 
would  be  of  absorbing  interest  to  any  reader  who  wished 
to  measure  the  natural  scientific  powers  of  my  grand- 
father but  which  would  be  misplaced  here.  I  am  en- 
gaged not  in  writing  a  biography  of  John  Quincy  Adams 


44     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

but  in  making  only  such  a  statement  of  the  temperament 
of  the  man  as  may  serve  to  elucidate  the  actions  and 
writings  of  one  of  his  grandsons  as  well  as  his  own.  Hence, 
I  must  pass  over  the  details  of  the  composition  of  the 
Report,  and  hasten  at  once  to  its  pubhcation. 

As  the  month  of  October,  1820,  wasted,  Mr.  Adams' 
anxiety  to  jfinish  it  became  so  acute  that  he  suffered 
severely  from  insonmia,  and  yet  in  spite  of  all  obstacles, 
even  of  Stratford  Canning,  who  lounged  in  the  ofl&ce 
at  the  rate  of  three  hours  a  day  and  then  insulted  the 
Secretary,  thereby  throwing  a  mass  of  additional  copy- 
ing on  his  hands,  Adams  succeeded  in  sending  his  report 
to  Congress  on  February  22, 1821.  This  was  also  the  day 
on  which  the  Florida  treaty  was  ratified,  which  Mr. 
Adams  held  to  be  his  great  diplomatic  triumph. 

At  the  moment  of  pubhcation  Mr.  Adams  felt  abashed, 
as  it  was  reasonable  that  an  essentially  modest  man, 
like  himself,  should  feel,  for  though  he  knew  that  he  had 
done  his  best,  he  dared  not  hope  that  he  had  made  good 
his  deficiencies,  and  he  saw  no  one  to  whom  he  could 
turn  for  criticism  or  for  aid  in  his  perplexities.  Before 
the  fiutial  revision,  indeed,  he  sent  the  copy  to  Calhoun, 
who,  while  generally  approving,  suggested  a  few  slight 
alterations  and  omissions,  all  of  which  Adams  adopted. 
But  Calhoun  was  by  no  means  an  authority  on  science. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       45 

And  *'who  was  he,"  as  Adams  told  himself  despondently, 
to  ventm'e  to  expomid,  "a  subject  which  has  occupied 
for  the  last  sixty  years  many  of  the  ablest  men  in  Europe, 
and  to  which  all  the  power  and  all  the  philosophical  and 
mathematical  learning  and  ingenuity  of  France  and 
Great  Britain  have  been  incessantly  directed?"  At  first 
the  scientific  world  was  inclined  to  take  him  at  his  own 
valuation.  No  trade  or  profession  likes  interlopers, 
science,  perhaps,  least  of  all,  and  so  far  as  immediate 
success  went,  Mr.  Adams'  very  strength  militated  most 
strongly  against  him.  Science  could  not  beUeve  that  it 
could  be  sound  and  yet  literary,  artistic,  and  historical. 
A  man  who  produced  a  gem  like  the  Report  of  Weights 
and  Measures  must  necessarily  be  a  quack.  For  the 
Report  on  Weights  and  Measures  is  a  vast  effort  at 
generahzation.  It  was  unprecedented.  It  deals  with 
history  and  philosophy  quite  as  much  as  with  physics. 
Richard  Rush,  who  was  very  intelligent,  laid  his  finger 
instantly  upon  the  weak  spot.  "I  have  finished  a  first 
perusal  of  the  report  on  weights  and  mesures  and  must 
say,  with  far  more  interest  than  I  ever  expected  to  feel 
in  the  pursuit  of  such  a  discussion.  ...  Of  its  various 
scientific  deductions,  I  am  no  judge,  but  naturally  place 
these  at  a  high  rate  from  the  abundant  research  of  which 
the  investigation  everywhere  bears  evidence.    It  is  not 


46     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

always  that  elaborate  deductions  of  science,  come  recom- 
mended by  so  much  literature  and  eloquence.  I  have 
always  thought  the  subject  dry,  but  I  see  that  it  is  most 
fruitful ;  I  had  thought  it  circumscribed,  but  I  see  that 
it  embraces  everything." 

As  Rush  intimated  the  Report  was  too  broad  for  any 
contemporary  audience.  It  contained  too  much  science 
for  the  general  public,  and  too  much  literature  for  the 
profession.  Science  always  tends  to  a  narrow  specializa- 
tion. Mathematicians  in  especial  distrust  inferences 
based  on  premises  drawn  from  history  or  philosophy. 
Conversely  Rush  said  bluntly  that  his  opinion  on  the 
technical  side  was  worthless.  And  yet  it  was  upon  its 
technical  excellence  that  the  work  must  stand  or  fall. 
Precisely  in  the  same  way,  John  Adams,  who  would  have 
devoured  with  ravenous  relish  every  word  his  beloved 
son  might  have  chanced  to  write  on  jurisprudence,  meta- 
physics, politics,  or  history,  had  to  admit  that  he  could 
not  read  physics,  so  widely  were  their  minds  sundered 
on  this  subject  which  he  had  never  studied  and  for  which 
he  had  no  aptitude. 

Little  Hill,  May  10,  1821. 
My  DEAR  Son  ; 

My  thanks  are  due  to  you,  and  are  most  joyfully  given, 
for  two  copies  of  your  ''Report  on  Weights  and  Meas- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       47 

ures,"  .  .  .  Though  I  cannot  say,  and  perhaps  shall 
never  be  able  to  say,  that  I  have  read  it,  yet  I  have  turned 
over  leaves  of  it  enough  to  see  that  it  is  a  mass  of  his- 
torical, philosophical,  chemical,  metaphysical  and  po- 
litical knowledge,  which  no  industry  in  this  country  but 
yours  could  have  collected  in  so  short  a  time.  .  .  .  Wash- 
ington used  to  say  sometimes,  "They  work  me  hard." 
I  am  sure  they  work  you  harder,  I  fear  they  will  work  you 
up  too  soon.  I  am  glad  to  perceive  that  your  brother 
[Thomas  Adams,  the  judge  of  the  Court  of  Common 
Pleas],  is  reading  the  book  with  attention. 

The  poor  old  man  loathed  the  Report  for  it  kept  his  son 
in  Washington  whom  he  was  wearing  his  heart  out  to  see, 
and  so  the  letter  ended,  with  a  prayer  for  pity ;  ''I  long  to 
see  you  once  more  and  hope  for  that  pleasure  as  soon  as  the 
public  service  will  permit,  I  subscribe  with  pride  and 
exquisite  delight,  your  affectionate  father."  In  America 
the  work  fell  dead.  That  it  should  have  done  so  was  to 
be  expected  since  literary  suspicion  and  incredulity  of 
compatriots  is  a  national  quality.  We  have  never  over- 
come that  trait  of  provincialism.  For  an  American 
author  to  receive  credit  in  his  own  country,  he  must 
first  win  reputation  abroad.  Thus  it  happened  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Adams.  He  obtained  no  word  of  intelligent 
criticism  until,  thirteen  years  after  the  book  had  been 
published,  he  made  the  following  entry  in  his  diary, 
touching  a  letter  which  had  reached  him  in  Quincy  from 


48     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

one  Colonel  Pasley,  of  the  Royal  Engineers,  who  had  him- 
self been  publishing  a  work  on  Weights  and  Measures. 
He  "says  he  has  done  justice  to  my  report  made  to  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States  in  1821,  acknowledging  that 
my  historical  account  of  English  Weights  and  Measures 
is  more  correct  than  any  that  has  been  given  by  any 
EngUsh  writer,  including  the  reports  of  the  committees 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  This  acknowledgment,  thir- 
teen years  after  the  pubhcation  of  my  report,  was  very 
gratifying  to  me.  If  either  of  my  children  or  any  of  theirs 
should  ever  read  this  page,  let  me  tell  him  that  Colonel 
Pasley's  testimonial  to  that  single  point,  the  accuracy 
of  my  historical  investigation  of  EngUsh  weights  and 
measures,  is  but  one  of  many  discoveries  which  he  will 
find  in  my  report,  if  he  will  have  the  courage  and  persever- 
ance to  read,  and  examine  it  as  he  reads.  He  will  find 
the  history  not  only  of  English  but  of  Hebrew,  Greek, 
Roman,  and  French  weights  and  measures,  traced  to  their 
origin,  in  the  natural  history  of  man  and  of  human  society, 
such  as  he  can  find  in  no  other  writer,  ancient  or  modern. 
"  He  will  find  a  philosophical  discussion  of  the  moral 
principles  involved  in  the  consideration  of  weights  and 
measures,  and  of  the  extent  and  hmitation  of  its  connection 
with  binal,  decimal,  and  duodecimal  arithmetic,  for  which 
he  might  look  in  vain  elsewhere ;  and  if  he  should  remark 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       49 

that  not  one  of  his  countrymen  ever  noticed  these  pe- 
culiarities of  that  report,  he  may  amuse  himself  by  in- 
quiring why  and  how  it  has  happened.  The  report,  from 
the  day  of  its  pubUcation,  has,  in  this  country,  scarcely 
been  known  to  exist;  and  this  commendation  of  it, 
coming  back  from  England,  is,  therefore,  the  more  wel- 
come to  me.'*  ^ 

Mr.  Adams  apparently  intended  to  intimate  to  us,  his 
descendants,  that  we  should  do  well  to  be  modest  in  our 
expectations  if  we  looked  for  recognition  for  anything 
which  we  might  produce  containing  original  ideas,  or 
attempts  at  generalization.  For  what  he  says  of  him- 
self is  true.  His  work  of  weights  and  measures  is  monu- 
mental and  has,  since  his  death,  been  so  recognized  by  a 
younger  generation  who  did  not  feel  themselves  to  be  in 
competition  with  him.  But  the  scientific  is  like  any 
other  profession,  it  looks  with  jealousy  on  an  interloper, 
who  imdertakes  to  generalize  from  premises  of  which 
scientific  men  are  perhaps  ignorant.  For,  as  a  rule,  no 
scientist  pretends  to  know  much  history.  Once,  how- 
ever, that  the  value  of  the  report  had  been  demon- 
strated ample  recognition  came. 

Twenty-one  years  after  its  author's  death.  Professor 
Charles  Davies,  who  long  had  been  eminent,  and  who 
» Diaxy  IX,  185. 


50    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

for  many  years  had  filled  the  chair  of  mathematics  at 
Columbia  and  at  West  Point,  was  appointed  by  a  com- 
mittee of  the  University  Convocation  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  to  examine  into  the  policy  of  Congress  in 
enacting  a  statute  in  1866  making  the  metric  system 
lawful  in  the  United  States.  Professor  Davies  passed 
two  years  in  investigation  himself,  and  then  submitted 
his  report  in  the  form  of  a  volume  of  three  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  pages,  divided  into  four  parts.  To  part 
three  of  this  exhaustive  work  he  prefixed  the  following 
introduction  which  is  the  more  remarkable,  as  few  scien- 
tific works  retain  their  value,  as  text-books,  very  long. 
This  was  written  fifty  years  after  pubUcation. 

"Part  III.  is  the  able  and  extraordinary  report  of  Mr. 
John  Quincy  Adams.  He  examined  the  whole  subject 
with  the  minuteness  and  accuracy  of  mathematical 
science  —  with  the  keen  sagacity  of  statesmanship,  and 
the  profound  wisdom  of  philosophy.  To  that  report 
nothing  can  be  added,  and  from  it  nothing  should  be 
taken  away.  Hence  the  committee  have  published  it 
in  full,  that  the  pubUc  and  especially  the  teachers  of  the 
country,  may  understand  the  entire  subject  in  all  its 
phases  and  in  all  its  relations." 

Another  quarter  of  a  century  elapsed,  and  in  1906, 
Sir  Sandford  Flemming,  as  chairman  of  a  committee  ap- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       51 

pointed  by  the  Royal  Society  of  Canada  to  consider  the 
forty-inch  metre,  on  May  25,  presented  a  report  ac- 
companied by  an  address  in  which  after  observing  that 
"International  uniformity  in  weights  and  measures  has 
been  desired  for  many  generations,"  went  on  to  cite  the 
opinions  of  several  eminent  philosophers.  The  first 
among  these  to  whom  Sir  Sandford  referred  was  John 
Quincy  Adams. 

"Among  the  many  distinguished  men  who  within  the 
last  hundred  years  have  studied  the  question  with  the 
view  of  finding  a  solution  to  the  important  international 
problem  was  John  Quincy  Adams,  who  three  years  be- 
fore he  became  the  sixth  president  of  the  United  States 
drew  up  a  report  on  weights  and  measures  which  is  still 
a  classic,  and  shows  an  almost  incredible  amount  of  in- 
vestigation." 

Finally,  in  1906,  Messrs.  Hallock  and  Wade  published 
an  elaborate  work  on  the  "Evolution  of  Weights  and 
Measures,"  presumably,  considering  the  high  reputation 
of  these  gentlemen,  containing  the  maturest  conclusions 
of  modern  science.  In  this  work  the  authors  devote 
some  considerable  space  to  the  report  of  John  Quincy 
Adams,  with  whose  conclusions  they  disagree.  Their 
criticism,  nevertheless,  begins  thus:  "Adams  .  .  ,  sub- 
mitted [a  report]  on  February  22, 1821,  that  has  since  been 


52    THE  DEGRADATION  OP  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

considered  almost  a  classic  in  American  metrology.  .  .  . 
While  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  do  justice  to  the 
completeness  and  philosophic  treatment  of  the  subject 
in  this  report,  by  any  summary  or  brief  extracts,  never- 
theless a  few  passages  will  show  how  keen  was  Mr.  Adams' 
understanding  of  the  matter,  and  how  well  he  appreciated 
the  advantages  of  the  French  system."^ 

Precisely  in  the  same  way  I  have  some  reason  to  expect 
that  much  of  the  scientific  world  will  sneer  at  Henry's 
inferences  in  "Phase."  And  in  pubhshing  his  essay  I 
give  full  weight  to  my  grandfather's  warning  to  expect 
nothing. 

But  touching  John  Quincy  Adams,  from  whom  Henry 
received  so  abundant  a  share  of  his  inheritance  of  in- 
tellectual capacity,  science  was  his  tenderest  part,  and 
the  part  where  he  received  the  least  sympathy  and  in- 
telligent support  from  his  family  or  friends.  Henry  has 
told  us  how  at  Quincy  no  one  took  the  old  man's  garden- 
ing seriously,  and  in  the  country  at  large  his  luck  was 
little  better,  and  this  tried  him,  perhaps  more  than  all 
the  rest.  For  example,  when  president,  he  observed 
how  the'hve-oak  was  wasted  and  abused  and  he  attempted 

1 "  Outlines  of  the  Evolution  of  Weights  and  Measures  and  the  Metric 
System,  by  William  Hallock,  Professor  of  Physics  in  Columbia  Uni- 
versity, and  Herbert  T.  Wade,  Editor  for  Physics  and  Applied  Science, 
The  New  International  Encyclopedia,"  pp.  115,  116. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      63 

to  protect  it.  In  1828  he  matured  a  plan  to  preserve  a 
forest  of  live-oak  near  Pensacola,  because  the  natural 
history  of  the  live-oak  had  many  singularities  and  had 
not  been  observed;  and  this  plantation  was  growing 
luxuriantly,  and  numbered  upwards  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand trees,  to  which  he  added  a  nursery  of  seedUngs  that 
their  habits  might  be  observed.  All  this,  as  Adams 
bitterly  observed  afterward,  ''is  to  be  abandoned  by  the 
stolid  ignorance  and  stupid  maHgnity  of  John  Branch  and 
of  his  filthy  subaltern,  Amos  Kendall."  He  could  not 
reconcile  himself  "to  the  maUcious  pleasure  of  [Jackson's 
administration,]  of  destroying  everything  of  which  I 
had  planted  the  germ." 

With  Mr.  Adams  science  and  education  were  passions, 
and  amounted  to  a  reUgion,  as  I  have  said.  For  forty 
years  ago  the  theory  of  progression  towards  perfection  was 
popularly  accepted  as  Henry  has  described  it  to  have  been 
in  his  "Education."  "Unbroken  Evolution  under  uni- 
form conditions  pleased  every  one,  —  except  curates  and 
bishops;  it  was  the  very  best  substitute  for  rehgion."* 
All  of  which  was  perfectly  true  of  London  in  the  sixties, 
but  it  was  not  thus  that  John  Quincy  Adams  mingled  his 
science  with  his  God.  To  him  the  issue  was,  literally,  one 
of  hfe  and  death,  for  were  his  premises  false,  and  were  he 
»"Eduoation,"225. 


54    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

mistaken  in  his  belief  that  the  universe  were  ruled  by  a 
conscious  and  benign  God,  then  progressive  improvement 
would  be  impossible,  civiUzation  would  be  a  failure,  and 
the  world  itself  a  place  in  which  he  cared  not  to  Uve. 

Never  was  crusader  more  sternly  in  earnest  in  his  belief 
in  the  miraculous  virtue  of  the  rehcs  which  he  had  suffered 
so  much  to  conquer  and  by  which  he  hoped  to  gain  felicity 
on  earth  and  in  heaven,  than  was  John  Quincy  Adams  in 
1828  in  his  faith  that  there  was  a  God  in  heaven  whose 
thought  was  manifested  in  those  truths  which  he  de- 
scribed as  scientific  laws,  which  would,  were  they  properly 
studied  and  observed,  certainly  lead  to  such  an  approach 
to  perfection  as  would  enable  mankind  to  suppress  forever 
the  ulcers  of  war  and  slavery. 

Doubtless  as  the  election  of  1828  approached  he  had 
his  fears.  He  mistrusted  himself  as  to  whether  he  had 
duly  served  his  Creator.  But  he  never  suspected  that 
God  could  not  cause  him  to  triumph  if  he  would.  In 
the  same  way,  Guy  de  Lusignan  with  his  crusaders  fought 
Saladin  at  Tiberias  in  1187,  in  the  faith  that  the  cross  they 
bore  before  them  would  give  them  victory,  if  only  God 
would  work  his  miracle.  Both  behevers  were  totally 
defeated  and  the  effect  on  their  world  was  much  the  same. 
After  Tiberias  the  relics  lost  their  value,  so  much  so  that 
from  having  been  accepted  as  the  best  possible  security 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       55 

for  loans  by  bankers,  they  fell  to  the  point  where  they 
became  an  absolute  danger  to  the  possessor,  as  the  monks 
found  to  their  cost  in  England  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Adams  did  not  fare  quite  so  badly  as  did  the  wretched 
Abbot  of  Glastonbury  under  Henry  VIII,  but  he  suffered 
enough  to  embitter  him  permanently  and  to  make  him 
seriously  doubt  the  existence  of  a  God  and  of  the  efficacy 
of  science  as  a  guide.  Nevertheless  he  persevered  to 
the  end  of  his  Ufe,  always  hoping  against  hope.  To 
him  the  alternative  was  too  dreadful  for  contemplation. 
It  so  happened  that  in  October  of  1830  his  neighbors  of 
the  Plymouth  District  nominated  Mr.  Adams  for  Con- 
gress, and  in  the  following  November  they  elected  him 
by  a  great  majority.  On  the  evening  of  November  6,  the 
day  on  which  he  heard  the  news,  he  sat  alone  at  home, 
meditating  on  what  had  befallen  him.  The  event  to 
him  was  quite  unexpected.  It  fairly  bewildered  him.  He 
thus  poured  out  his  feelings:  ''Twenty-two  towns  gave 
2565  votes,  of  which  1817  were  for  John  Quincy  Adams. 
...  I  am  a  member  elect  of  the  Twenty-Second  Congress. 
.  .  .  My  return  to  public  Ufe  in  a  subordinate  station  is 
disagreeable  to  my  family,  and  disapproved  by  some  of 
my  friends ;  though  no  one  has  expressed  that  disappro- 
bation to  me. 

"  For  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  this  particular  station 


56    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

I  never  was  eminently  qualified,  possessing  no  talent  for 
extemporaneous  public  speaking,  and  at  this  time  being 
in  the  decUne  of  my  faculties,  both  of  mind  and  body. 
This  event,  therefore,  gives  me  deep  concern  and  anxious 
forebodings  .  .  .  No  one  knows,  and  few  conceive,  the 
agony  of  mind  that  I  have  suffered  from  the  time  that  I 
was  made  by  circumstances,  and  not  by  my  volition,  a  can- 
didate for  the  presidency  till  I  was  dismissed  from  that 
station  by  the  failure  of  my  reelection.  They  were 
feelings  to  be  suppressed  and  they  were  suppressed.  No 
human  being  has  ever  heard  me  complain.  .  .  . 

"  But  this  call  upon  me  by  the  people  of  the  district  in 
which  I  reside,  to  represent  them  in  Congress,  has  been 
spontaneous,  and  although  counteracted  by  a  double 
opposition,  federalist  and  Jacksonite,  I  have  received 
nearly  three  votes  in  four  throughout  the  district.  My 
election  as  President  of  the  United  States  was  not  half  so 
gratifying  to  my  inmost  soul.  No  election  or  appointment 
conferred  upon  me  ever  gave  me  so  much  pleasure.  I 
say  this  to  record  my  sentiments;  but  no  stranger 
intermeddleth  with  my  joys,  and  the  dearest  of  my  friends 
have  no  sympathy  with  my  sensations." 

Yet  almost  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  despite  his  mis- 
givings, Mr.  Adams  after  taking  his  seat  in  Congress, 
though  opposed  through  the  remainder  of  his  Ufe  by  a 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       57 

series  of  democratic  administrations  and  by  a  reactionary, 
victorious,  and  malignant  slave  oligarchy,  succeeded 
rather  better  as  a  lonely  member  of  the  House  in  the 
advancement  of  those  ideas  which  he  considered  that  he 
had  been  bom  to  preach,  than  he  had  as  President  of  the 
United  States,  with  all  the  power  and  influence  which 
that  office  gives. 

Certainly  toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  exercised  a  far 
greater  influence  on  popular  opinion  than  he  had  ever 
attained  to  before.  Inside  of  Congress  and  out,  he  toiled 
unceasingly  to  improve  education  and  to  stimulate 
science.  He  urged  on  Congress  the  organization  of  a 
naval  academy  to  train  men  of  the  quality  of  his  contem- 
poraries, Maury,  Gilliss,  and  Davis,  and  he  never  remitted 
his  agitation  for  an  observatory.  In  his  vacations  he 
experimented  on  tree  planting  and  lectured  on  education. 
In  New  York  and  Philadelphia  he  attended  conventions 
of  learned  societies,  and  he  so  impressed  himself  on  those 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact,  that  he  finally  made  even 
a  slave-holding  Congress  recognize  his  abiUty  and  use  him 
whenever  they  thought  it  safe  to  do  so. 

Occasionally  scientific  matters  came  before  Congress 
when  special  committees  were  appointed  and  then  the 
speaker  not  infrequently  appointed  Adams  chairman, 
when  he  seldom  failed  to  offer  some  suggestion  of  appro- 


58    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

priations  and  to  sustain  them  with  a  luminous  report. 
An  example  of  such  a  paper  is  the  report  he  made  in 
1840  on  a  petition  of  the  American  Philosophical  Society, 
headed  by  Bache,  asking  for  magnetic  observatories. 
But  his  most  brilUant  service  in  this  connection  was 
his  defence  of  the  Smithson  bequest.  In  1826  James 
Smithson  bequeathed  £100,000  to  the  United  States,  to 
found  in  Washington,  under  the  name  of  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  an  estabUshment  for  the  "increase  and  diffusion 
of  knowledge  among  men."  Finally,  after  the  death  of 
Mr.  Smithson  in  1835,  through  the  services  of  Mr.  Rush, 
£104,599  in  gold  were  brought  home  and  in  1838  were 
deposited  in  the  mint  in  Philadelphia,  and  then  at  once  an 
acrimonious  controversy  touching  the  execution  of  the  trust 
set  in,  fomented  by  every  adventurer  in  search  of  a  job  in 
the  United  States.  The  struggle  lasted  several  years,  and 
meanwhile  the  only  practical  step  the  government  took 
was,  as  a  popular  measure,  to  invest  the  whole  fimd  in 
Arkansas  bonds,  which  proved  to  be  worthless.  Mr. 
Adams,  as  chairman  of  the  House  Committee,  made  a 
series  of  reports,  the  most  famous  of  which  is  that  of  1840, 
in  which  he  presented  resolutions  pledging  the  United 
States  to  preserve  the  principal  of  the  bequest  unimpaired 
and  so  invested  as  to  yield  six  per  cent,  while  the  income 
of  the  fimd  alone  should  be  used  for  the  objects  of  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       59 

bequest.  Mr.  Adams  advised  that  the  first  appropriation 
should  be  for  the  establishment  of  an  observatory.  Other 
reports  of  the  same  character  followed.  So  full  of  vigor 
are  these  papers  that  Professor  Nourse,  the  historian  of 
the  Naval  Observatory,  observes  in  his  memoir,  published 
in  1873,  alluding  to  the  report  of  1842,  "The  remark  has 
been  made  by  a  competent  judge  that  it  is  '  well  worth 
the  perusal  of  every  lover  of  the  glorious  science  of 
astronomy,  both  for  the  richness  of  its  information  and  the 
beauty  of  its  eloquence.'  "  ^ 

Finally  even  so  reactionary  a  body  as  an  American  Con- 
gress, dominated  by  slave-holders,  perceived  that  an 
observatory  was  an  essential  part  of  the  equipment  of 
any  civilized  government  and  took  steps  to  build  one  at 
Washington.  Needless  to  say  this  plan  was  enthusias- 
tically approved  by  Mr.  Adams,  but  years  were  still  to 
elapse  before  his  anxieties  were  to  cease  and  his  labors 
were  to  be  crowned  with  success  touching  the  Smithsonian. 
Nevertheless,  among  all  Mr.  Adams'  scientific  interests 
astronomy  stirred  him  most,  and  an  attempt  to  stimulate 
that  branch  of  science  finally  cost  him  his  life.  When  he 
described  his  emotions  on  contemplating  the  heavens,  he 
sometimes  used  language  of  great  imaginative  power. 

*  Memoir  of  the  Founding  and  Progress  of  the  United  States  Naval 
Observatory,  Professor  J.  E.  Nourse,  U.  S.  N.  p.  25. 


60    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

"To  me,  the  observation  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  has 
been  for  a  great  portion  of  my  Ufe  a  pleasure  of  gratified 
curiosity,  of  ever  returning  wonder,  and  of  reverence  for 
the  Creator  and  mover  of  these  unnumbered  worlds. 
There  is  something  of  awful  enjoyment  in  observing  the 
rising  and  setting  of  the  sun.  That  flashing  beam  of  his 
first  appearance  upon  the  horizon;  that  sinking  of  the 
last  ray  beneath  it;  that  perpetual  revolution  of  the 
Great  and  Little  Bear  round  the  pole ;  that  rising  of  the 
whole  constellation  of  Orion  from  the  horizontal  to  the 
perpendicular  position,  and  his  ride  through  the  heavens, 
with  his  belt,  his  nebulous  sword,  and  his  four  comer 
stars  of  the  first  magnitude,  are  soiu-ces  of  dehght  to  me 
which  never  tire.  .  .  .  There  is,  indeed,  intermingled 
with  all  this  a  painful  desire  to  know  more  of  this  stupen- 
dous system;  of  sorrow  in  reflecting  how  httle  we  can 
ever  know  of  it ;  and  of  almost  desponding  hope  that  we 
may  know  more  of  it  hereafter."  ^ 

Thus  astronomy  appealed  to  Mr.  Adams  both  through 
the  imagination  and  the  reason,  and  he  concluded,  and 
probably  correctly,  that  astronomy  would  be  the  best 
instrument  wherewith  to  rouse  to  an  interest  in  science 
a  somewhat  apathetic  community.  Up  to  1844  the  United 
States  did  not  possess  a  single  observatory.    Mariners 

»X,38. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRT  ADAMS       61 

had  to  depend  upon  the  calculations  made  at  Greenwich. 
A  nautical  almanac  was  impossible.  Even  the  longitude 
of  Washington  could  not  be  fixed  with  proper  exactness, 
and  this  inertia  filled  Mr.  Adams  with  shame.  In  his 
first  message  to  Congress  he  urged  the  erection  of  an 
observatory  in  words  which  filled  the  friends  of  General 
Jackson  with  mirth. 

"It  is  with  no  feeling  of  pride  as  an  American,  that  the 
remark  may  be  made,  that,  on  the  comparatively  small 
territorial  surface  of  Europe,  there  are  existing  more 
than  one  hundred  and  thirty  of  these  light-houses  of  the 
skies ;  while  throughout  the  whole  American  hemisphere 
there  is  not  one."  The  phrase  "  Hght-houses  of  the 
skies"  probably  brought  more  ridicule  on  Mr.  Adams 
than  anything  he  ever  said.  The  line  which  divided  John 
Quincy  Adams  from  even  the  most  enhghtened  of  his 
pohtical  contemporaries  was  most  distinctly  his  aptitude 
for  science.  He  alone  among  public  men  of  that  period 
appreciated  that  a  nation  to  flourish  imder  conditions 
of  modern  economic  competition,  must  organize  its 
administrative,  as  well  as  its  social  system  upon  scientific 
principles. 

Years  elapsed,  and  Mr.  Adams  grew  old.  Apparently 
he  had  achieved  little  toward  realizing  his  dream  of  doing 
a  work  beneficial  to  mankind.    He  had  been  defeated  in 


62  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

his  effort  to  organize  the  national  administration  of 
public  affairs  upon  a  scientific  basis,  he  had  failed  to 
accomplish  anything  of  moment  by  his  experiments  in 
cultivation  at  Quincy,  he  had  indeed  been  greatly  ridi- 
culed even  in  his  family ;  he  had  not  even  been  able  to 
induce  Congress  to  execute  honestly  its  trust  relative  to  the 
Smithsonian  bequest,  but  he  had  won  renown  as  an  anti- 
slavery  champion.  His  fame  and  popularity  were 
astounding. 


CHAPTER  III 
The  Heritage  of  Henry  Adams 

IN  July,  1843,  he  happened  to  take  a  vacation  journey 
to  Niagara  with  Mr.  Brooks  and  my  mother.  Hardly 
had  he  entered  the  state  of  New  York  when  this  journey 
was  transformed  into  a  triumphal  progress  by  a  sponta- 
neous popular  ovation.  In  the  midst  of  the  outburst,  on 
July  24,  while  at  Niagara,  Professor  Mitchel  arrived  from 
Cincinnati,  bringing  an  invitation  from  an  astronomical 
society  organized  there,  to  deliver  an  oration  at  the  laying 
of  the  corner-stone  of  the  observatory  they  were  about  to 
build.  Mr.  Adams  immediately  became  much  excited. 
"I  asked  Mr.  Mitchel  for  a  short  interval  of  time  to  make 
up  my  mind  upon  a  proposal  so  strange  to  me;  and  so 
flattering  that  I  scarcely  dare  to  think  of  it  with  compo- 
sure." The  next  day  he  accepted.  Probably  he  never 
thought  seriously  of  declining,  and  yet  he  knew  the  risks 
he  ran,  and  the  remote  possibility  of  advantage  to  himself. 
Perhaps  of  English  and  American  statesmen,  situated 
as  he  was  then  situated,  Bacon  and  Franklin  alone  might 
have  taken  the  view  he  took  and  chosen  as  he  chose. 
Hardly  could  he  justify  himself  in  his  own  eye.  "I  have 
accepted  the  invitation,  and  promised  to  perform  the 

63 


64    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

duty,  if  in  my  power,  on  some  day  in  the  month  of 
November  next.  .  .  .  This  is  a  rash  promise,  and,  in  faith- 
fully analyzing  my  motives  for  making  it,  I  wish  I  could 
find  them  pure  from  all  alloy  of  vanity  and  self-glorifi- 
cation. It  is  an  arduous,  hazardous,  and  expensive  under- 
taking, the  successful  performance  of  which  is  more  than 
problematical,  and  of  the  event  of  which  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  foresee  anything  but  disappointment.  Yet, 
there  is  a  motive  pure  and  elevated,  and  a  purpose  benev- 
olent and  generous,  at  least,  mingling  with  the  impulses 
which  in  this  case  I  obey."  ^ 

On  July  25,  1843,  when  John  Quincy  Adams  wrote 
these  words,  he  had  entered  upon  his  seventy-seventh 
year.  The  ceremony  was  to  take  place  the  following 
November.  He  had  then  held  almost  every  office  in  the 
gift  of  the  people  or  of  the  government.  In  his  old  age, 
after  a  life  of  turmoil  and  of  alternations  of  fortunes,  he 
had  reached  the  pinnacle  of  dignity  and  of  honor.  His 
constitution  though  relatively  vigorous  had  been  strained 
by  his  labors ;  he  suffered  from  a  bad  catarrhal  cough 
aggravated  by  excessive  public  speaking;  he  could  not 
fill  a  tithe  of  the  calls  upon  him  made  imperative  by  his 
position  as  a  political  leader.  He  stood  in  much  need  of 
repose  before  the  next  session  of  Congress  would  begin. 

1X1,394,5. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       65 

If  he  accepted  the  invitation,  he  must  prepare  an  oration 
which  should  be  worthy  of  the  occasion  and  of  himself,  he 
must  face  a  journey  of  great  hardship,  in  an  inclement 
season,  and  he  must  undergo  the  fatigue  of  a  prolonged 
pubUc  ovation,  an  ordeal  which  always  filled  him  with 
dismay.  So  far  as  he  could  then  see,  he  could  gain  nothing 
personally,  save  the  slight  satisfaction  of  linking  his  name 
with  the  foundation  of  the  first  American  observatory, 
a  fact  which  would  be  soon  forgotten.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  might  use  his  fleeting  popularity  to  promote  science. 
This  consideration  prevailed.  He  determined  to  make 
the  effort,  and  run  the  risk.  The  risk  proved  to  be  greater 
than  even  he  supposed.  From  the  fatigue  and  exposure 
of  that  journey  he  never  fully  recovered,  and  as  the  point 
whence  Mr.  Adams  began  rapidly  to  fail,  the  Cincinnati 
celebration  has  a  pathetic  interest.  The  strain  told 
almost  inmiediately.  Mr.  Adams  had  never  known 
popularity,  and  his  journey  through  New  York  wrought 
upon  him.  His  nerves  had  lost  their  elasticity,  and 
excitement  made  him  sleepless.  Worst  of  all,  although 
oppressed  with  work,. he  found  he  could  no  longer  labor 
as  had  been  his  wont. 

As  the  weeks  passed  he  found  himself  less  and  less 
able  to  cope  with  his  accumulating  tasks.  He  could  not 
escape  meeting  his  constituents  before  leaving  home  for 


66    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  winter,  and  by  September  7,  he  complained  that 
arrears  of  correspondence  and  his  address  oppressed  him 
**to  distraction."  On  September  20,  he  was  persuaded  to 
consent  to  lectm'e  at  Springfield  on  his  way  to  the  west, 
and  the  excitement  and  worry  of  these  "manifold  engage- 
ments "  produced  serious  insomnia.  "A  state  of  existence 
bordering  I  fear  upon  insanity,  and  which  I  contemplate 
with  alarm."  ^ 

Meanwhile  he  toiled  on  his  oration,  which  he  hoped  to 
make  a  history  of  astronomy  so  alluring  that  it  would 
kindle  lasting  enthusiasm.  Every  library,  pubHc  and 
private,  within  reach  was  put  under  contribution,  and 
his  friends  journeyed  to  Quincy  laden  with  books.  He 
dwelt  much  in  secret  on  what  he  hoped  to  accomplish; 
he  recognized  that  this  was  the  last  opportunity  he  should 
ever  have  to  realize  his  aspiration  of  stimulating  his 
generation  to  intellectual  activity.  "My  task  is  to  turn 
this  transient  gust  of  enthusiasm  for  the  science  of  astron- 
omy at  Cincinnati  into  a  permanent  and  persevering 
national  pursuit,  which  may  extend  the  bounds  of  human 
knowledge,  and  make  my  country  instrumental  in  ele- 
vating the  character  and  improving  the  condition  of  man 
upon  earth.  The  hand  of  God  himself  has  furnished  me 
this  opportunity  to  do  good.  But  Oh!  how  much  will 
1 MSS.  Sept.  21,  1843. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       67 

depend  upon  my  manner  of  performing  that  task !  And 
with  what  agony  of  soul  must  I  implore  the  aid  of  Al- 
mighty Wisdom  for  powers  of  conception,  energy  of  exer- 
tion, and  unconquerable  will  to  accompUsh  my  design."  ^ 
I  think  he  never  wrote  with  such  intensity  of  feeling  of 
any  poUtical  event. 

On  October  20,  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  perforce  he 
brought  his  oration  "  to  a  sudden  and  abrupt  termination." 
There  was  no  time  for  revision.  It  was  only  possible 
with  haste  to  have  a  single  copy  made.  He  admitted 
to  himself  that  he  "shivered  at  the  thought."  His 
departure  was  then  only  three  days  distant,  and  one  of 
those  days  had  to  be  devoted  to  the  meeting  at  Dedham. 
As  his  departure  approached,  his  friends  were  appalled 
at  the  thought  of  the  journey  and  of  the  fatigue.  In  his 
journal  he  has  related  how  Mr.  Thayer  called  upon 
him  "and  was  quite  discomposed  at  the  prospect  of  my 
expedition  —  and  foresees  from  it  nothing  but  disaster  to 
myself."  Then  as  always  Mr.  Adams  admitted  that  he 
might  have  been  rash,  but  that  it  was  too  late  to  reconsider, 
—  "I  must  go  happen  what  may." 

Tuesday,  October  24,  was  his  last  day  at  home.  Having 
worked  till  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  on  his  speech  to 
his  constituents,  he  rose  at  half  past  four  to  go  to  Dedham. 
1  Memoirs,  19  Sept.,  1843. 


68    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  whole  country  side  thronged  to  hear  him.  A  caval- 
cade met  him.  The  church  was  packed.  He  spoke  two 
hours  and  a  half.  ' '  A  miserable  fragment, "  as  he  thought, 
"of  what  it  should  have  been."  The  next  morning  after 
snatching  something  to  eat  at  quarter  past  five,  he  drove  to 
the  station  in  Boston,  and  took  the  train  for  Springfield, 
where  he  was  to  lecture.  On  reaching  Springfield,  ''I 
was  so  worn  down  with  weariness,  three  almost  sleepless 
nights  and  anxiety,  that  my  faculties  seemed  benumbed, 
and  I  felt  as  if  falling  into  a  lethargy." 

At  Springfield  the  weather  turned  cold.  In  crossing 
the  river  at  Albany  ''I  felt  as  if  I  were  incrusted  in  a  bed 
of  snow."  In  the  morning  he  was  awakened  by  the  hail. 
The  train  was  frozen  to  the  rails,  and  could  not  be  broken 
free  for  an  hour.  At  Buffalo  his  accommodation  was 
wretched,  and  on  Lake  Erie  he  met  a  fierce  snow  storm, 
and  was  wind-bound  for  a  day  and  a  half,  ''as  cold  as 
Nova  Zembla."  At  Cleveland  a  choice  had  to  be  made 
between  travelling  night  and  day  by  stage  coach  over 
two  hundred  and  thirty  miles  of  bad  and  dangerous 
roads  to  Columbus,  or  four  days  by  canal  boat,  on  the  Ohio 
Canal.  Those  in  charge  of  his  journey  chose  the  boat, 
but  before  departing  he  had  been  recognized  in  a  barber 
shop,  and  had  to  undergo  a  reception. 

In  the  afternoon  he  went  on  board  the  canal  boat  very 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       69 

unwell  with  catarrh,  sore  throat,  and  fever.  The  boat 
was  eighty  feet  long,  and  fifteen  feet  wide,  and  besides 
his  own  party  was  packed  with  the  crew,  four  horses, 
and  twenty  other  passengers.  *'So  much  humanity 
crowded  into  such  a  compass  was  a  trial  such  as  I  had 
never  before  experienced,  and  my  heart  sunk  within  me 
when,  squeezing  into  this  pillory,  I  reflected  that  I  am  to 
pass  three  nights  and  four  days  in  it."  —  "  We  were  obUged 
to  keep  the  windows  of  the  cabins  closed  against  the 
driving  snow,  and  the  stoves  heated  with  billets  of  wood, 
made  the  rooms  imcomfortably  warm."  "About  eleven 
o'clock  I  took  to  my  settee  bed,  with  a  head-ache,  feverish 
chills,  hoarseness,  and  a  sore  throat,  and  my  'tussis  seniUs' 
in  full  force."  He  lay  in  a  compartment  "with  an  iron 
stove  in  the  centre,  and  side  settees,  on  which  four  of  us 
slept,  feet  to  feet,"  next  to  "a  bulging  stable"  for  the 
horses. 

Moving  at  about  two  miles  and  a  half  an  hour,  bump- 
ing into  all  the  innumerable  locks,  until  the  boat  "staggers 
along  Uke  a  stiunbhng  nag,"  Mr.  Adams  sometimes  tried 
to  write  amidst  babel,  and  sometimes  played  euchre,  of 
which  he  had  never  heard  before.  At  each  town  where 
they  stopped  there  was  a  reception,  handshaking,  and 
speeches.  On  November  4,  the  party  reached  Columbus, 
where  a  conunittee  of  the  Astronomical  Society  were  in 


70  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

waiting,  but  his  cough  increased  in  severity,  and  the  throng 
of  visitors  was  overwhelming.  At  Jefferson  and  Spring- 
field the  same  scenes  were  repeated,  and  he  entered 
Dayton  "in  triumphal  procession,"  and  found  "a,  vast 
midtitude  of  the  people  assembled"  before  the  hotel. 
Mr.  Adams  had  to  speak  from  a  barouche.  ''I  was  beset 
the  whole  evening  by  a  succession  of  visitors  in  squads, 
to  be  introduced  and  shake  hands,  to  every  one  of  whom 
I  was  a  total  stranger,  and  the  name  of  not  one  of  whom 
I  can  remember.  My  friends  Grinnell  and  W.  C.  Johnson 
give  me  every  possible  encouragement  in  getting  along; 
but  the  strangeness  of  these  proceedings  increases  Uke  a 
ball  of  snow.  I  cannot  realize  that  these  demonstrations 
are  made  [for  me;  and  the  only  comfort  I  have  is  that 
they  are  intended  to  manifest  respect,  and  not  hatred."* 
Far  from  home,  in  the  middle  of  winter,  the  old  man 
realized  that  he  was  breaking  down. 

At  Lebanon  the  famous  Thomas  Corwin  welcomed  him 
before  an  enormous  audience  in  "an  address  of  splendid 
eloquence."    Mr.  Adams  was  covered  with  confusion. 

"These  premeditated  addresses  by  men  of  the  most 
consummate  ability,  and  which  I  am  required  to  answer 
off  hand,  without  an  instant  for  reflection,  are  distressing 
beyond  measure  and  humiliating  to  agony."  ^    He  "re- 

1 XI,  423.  « XI.  424. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       71 

tired  worn  out  with  fatigue."  The  tact  of  his  friends, 
who  probably  perceived  his  condition,  somewhat  allevi- 
ated his  misery,  "but  my  catarrh  and  excessive  kind- 
ness drive  me  to  despair."  ^  At  Cincinnati,  there  were 
more  processions,  more  crowds,  and  another  open-air 
address  delivered  from  the  balcony  of  the  hotel,  in  re- 
sponse to  the  welcome  of  the  mayor.  "My  answer 
was  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable,  without  a  spark  of 
eloquence  or  a  flash  of  oratory,  confused,  incoherent, 
muddy,  and  yet  received  with  new  shouts  of  welcome." 
At  Cincinnati  also  he  heard  from  the  committee  on 
arrangements  that  he  was  to  dehver  an  address  on  the 
spot  where  the  stone  was  laid,  as  well  as  the  oration. 
This  address  was  unexpected  and  of  course  unprepared. 
He  had  to  write  it  at  night. 

"Worn  down  with  fatigue,  anxiety  and  shame,  as  I 
was,  and  with  the  oppression  of  a  catarrhal  load  upon  my 
lungs,  I  sat  up  till  one  in  the  morning,  writing  the  address, 
which,  from  utter  exhaustion,  I  left  unfinished,  and  retired 
to  a  sleepless  bed.  I  fear  I  am  not  duly  grateful  to  Divine 
Providence  for  the  blessing  of  these  demonstrations  of 
kindness  and  honor  from  my  countrymen."  The  next 
day  it  rained  in  torrents.  It  rained  so  hard  that  it  wet 
through  the  manuscript  from  which  Mr.  Adams  read 

1  XI,  425. 


72    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

when  the  stone  was  laid,  and  the  oration  had  to  be 
deferred.  He  finally  deUvered  it  on  November  10,  in 
the  largest  church  in  the  city,  crowded  to  suffocation. 
Mr.  Adams  then  spoke  for  about  two  hours,  as  he 
observed  with  satisfaction,  without  a  ''symptom  of 
impatience  or  inattention"  among  the  audience.  There 
was  good  reason  for  attention.  An  intelhgent  audience 
could  hardly  have  been  inattentive,  for  the  oration  is  a 
gem.  It  can  still  be  read  with  delight,  although  it  bears 
the  marks  of  the  pressure  under  which  it  was  written. 
Its  arrangement  is  defective  and  its  termination  abrupt, 
but  notwithstanding  these  defects  it  probably  remains  the 
most  compact,  suggestive,  and  imaginative  essay  upon 
astronomy,  in  the  language.  Had  the  author  enjoyed 
the  strength  and  leisure  to  revise  it,  it  would  have  taken 
its  place  as  a  classic  beside  the  "  Weights  and  Measures." 
Receptions  awaited  him  as  he  ascended  the  Ohio,  the 
last  of  which,  at  Pittsbm-g,  he  found  ''inexpressibly  irk- 
some." "These  mass  meetings,  at  which  I  find  myself 
held  up  as  a  show,  where  the  most  fulsome  adulation  is 
addressed  to  me  face  to  face  in  the  presence  of  thousands, 
—  all  this  is  so  adverse  to  my  nature  that  ...  I  am  like 
one  coming  out  of  a  trance  or  fainting  fit,  unconscious  of 
what  has  been  passing  around  me."  ^ 

1  XI,  438. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       73 

From  Pittsburg  he  travelled  by  stage  coach  to  Cumber- 
land, the  weather  was  excessively  cold,  and  on  leaving 
Pittsburg  on  November  21,  he  admitted  to  himself  that 
he  was  dangerously  ill.  "The  stamina  of  my  constitution 
are  sinking  under  the  hardships  and  exposures  of  travelling 
at  this  season  and  at  my  time  of  life.  .  .  .  My  racking  cough 
all  last  night  left  me  scarce  an  hour  of  sleep,  and  no 
repose.  I  was  up  at  three  and  again  at  four,  and  wrote 
on  the  arrears  of  this  diary  from  that  time  till  seven." 

At  Union-town  "I  passed  a  night  of  torture,  with  a 
hacking  and  racking  cough,  and  feverish  headache.  I 
went  to  bed  at  9,  and  was  up  with  fits  of  coughing  at  11, 
at  1,  at  3,  and  at  5  this  morning,  and  j&nally  lay  till 
near  6  utterly  dispirited."  Sixty-two  miles  of  hard  stage 
riding  over  the  national  road  lay  between  him  and 
Cumberland.  "My  expedient  to  husband  my  strength 
till  I  can  get  home  is  abstinence  ...  I  ate  nothing  the 
whole  day."  ^ 

What  impression  John  Quincy  Adams  made  upon  the 
philosophical  and  educational  tendencies  of  his  generation 
cannot  be  determined,  but  probably  he  acted  powerfully 
upon  his  age.  Astronomy,  for  example,  which  in  1825 
was  the  laughing  stock  of  Congress,  became  before  his 
death  the  pampered  pet  of  the  nation.  Certainly  no 
» MS.  22  Nov.,  1843. 


74  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

American  statesman,  save  Franklin,  has  done  more  for 
science. 

Nevertheless  men  seldom  attain  precisely  that  for 
which  they  strive  by  the  means  they  use ;  ordinarily  the 
result  of  their  efforts  differs  from  their  anticipation.  It 
may  have  been  so  with  Mr.  Adams  touching  this  Cin- 
cinnati journey.  He  risked  his  hfe  to  stimulate  science. 
Perhaps  in  this  direction  he  may  have  accomphshed  less 
than  he  had  hoped,  but  the  political  effect  of  his  astound- 
ing progress  through  Ohio  was  prodigious.  He  left 
Congress  a  radical  whom  the  conservatives  had  narrowly 
failed  to  expel.  He  returned  a  broken  old  man,  but  one 
before  whom  the  South  quailed.  He  had  no  illusions. 
He  frankly  admitted  to  himself  that,  in  substance,  he  had 
committed  suicide  for  the  sake  of  science.  He  wrote  on 
the  day  on  which  he  passed  his  own  door,  November 
24,  1843:  "I  have  performed  my  task,  I  have  executed 
my  undertaking,  and  am  returned  safe  to  my  family  and 
my  home.  It  is  not  much  in  itself.  It  is  nothing  in  the 
estimation  of  the  world.  In  my  motives  and  my  hopes,  it 
is  considerable.  The  people  of  this  country  do  not  suffi- 
ciently estimate  the  importance  of  patronizing  and  pro- 
moting science  as  a  principle  of  pohtical  action ;  and  the 
slave  oUgarchy  systematically  struggle  to  suppress  all 
pubUc  patronage  or  countenance  to  the  progress  of  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       75 

mind.  Astronomy  has  been  especially  neglected  and 
scornfully  treated.  This  invitation  had  a  gloss  of  showy 
representation  about  it  that  wrought  more  on  the  pubhc 
mind  than  many  volumes  of  dissertation  or  argument.  I 
hoped  to  draw  a  hvely  and  active  attention  to  it  among 
the  people,  and  to  put  in  motion  a  propelling  power  of 
intellect  which  will  no  longer  stagnate  into  rottenness. 
I  indulge  dreams  of  future  improvement  to  result  from 
this  proclamation  of  popular  homage  to  the  advance- 
ment of  science  .  .  .  But  I  return  to  my  home  with  the 
symptoms  of  speedy  dissolution  upon  me.  I  had  no  con- 
ception of  the  extent  to  which  I  have  been  weakened  by 
this  tussis  senilis,  ...  or  old  man's  cough.  My  strength 
is  prostrated  beyond  anything  that  I  ever  experienced 
before,  even  to  total  impotence.  I  have  httle  Ufe  left 
in  me."  To  this  sentence  my  father  has  appended 
this  note.  "There  can  be  httle  doubt  that  this  statement 
is  substantially  true.  Mr.  Adams  had  much  overtaxed 
his  physical  powers  in  this  trip."  My  grandmother  was 
aghast  when  /she  saw  him.  On  the  25th,  one  day  later,'she 
wrote  to  my  father,  "Your  father,  my  dear  Charles,"  has 
returned  in  a  state  of  debihty  and  exhaustion  beyond 
description."  She  called  in  the  family  physician  who, 
she  reported,  thought  his  symptoms  "very  dangerous," 
and  she  begged  my  father  to  visit  her  friend,  Dr.  Jacob 


76    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Bigelow,  and  ask  him  to  send  immediately  "a.  few  lines 
intimating  the  necessity  of  prudence,"  or  her  husband's 
impatience  of  control  might  be  fatal.  But  it  was  of  no 
avail.  John  Quincy  Adams  perfectly  appreciated  his 
predicament  and  what  he  had  deliberately  done.  He  was 
unrepentant.  Had  the  opportunity  been  open  to  him  to 
roll  time  backward  Uke  Hezekiah  on  the  dial  of  Ahaz, 
and  to  re-live  his  visit  to  Niagara,  knowing  all  that  had 
happened,  his  choice  would  still  have  been  the  same. 
The  only  reply  he  made  to  his  wife  when  she  pleaded 
with  him  was :  "It  would  be  a  glorious  moment  for  me  to 
die,  so  let  it  come."    And  it  did  come. 

On  August  15,  1846,  he  returned  to  Quincy  from 
Washington.  The  next  morning  was  Sunday,  and  on 
waking  he  wrote  the  following  species  of  supphcation  or 
prayer  which  is,  in  effect,  his  farewell  to  Ufe. 

"Quincy,  Sunday,  August  16th,  1846. — Blessing, 
praise,  and  supplication  to  God  on  first  rising  from  bed 
on  returning  to  my  earthly  home,  after  an  absence  of 
nine  months  in  the  public  service  of  my  country.  Some 
discouragement  of  soul  follows  the  reflection  that  my 
aspirations  to  live  in  the  memory  of  after-ages  as  a 
benefactor  of  my  country  and  of  mankind  have  not 
received  the  sanction  of  my  Maker;  that  the  longing 
of  my  soul  through  a  long  life  to  be  numbered  among  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       77 

blessings  bestowed  by  the  Creator  on  the  race  of  man  is 
rejected;  and  after  being  trammelled  and  counteracted 
and  disabled  at  every  step  of  my  progress,  my  faculties 
are  now  declining  from  day  to  day  into  mere  helpless 
impotence.  Yet  at  the  will  of  my  heavenly  Father  why 
should  I  repine  ?"  , 

Like  Moses,  and  a  host  of  other  idealists  and  reformers, 
John  Quincy  Adams  had  dreamed  that,  by  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  divine  thought,  as  manifested  in  nature,  he 
could  covenant  with  God,  and  thus  regenerate  mankind. 
He  knew  that  he  had  kept  his  part  of  this  covenant,  even 
too  well.  In  return,  when  it  came  to  the  test,  God  had 
abandoned  him  and  had  made  Jackson  triumph,  and  to 
Adams,  Jackson  was  the  materiahzation  of  the  principle 
of  evil.  Jackson  was,  to  use  Mr.  Adams'  own  words  when 
he  was  asked  to  attend  at  Harvard  when  the  University 
made  Jackson  a  Doctor  of  Laws,  "a  barbarian  who  could 
not  write  a  sentence  of  grammar  and  hardly  could  spell 
his  own  name."  And  more  than  this,  Jackson  embodied 
the  principle  of  public  plunder,  which  Adams  believed  to 
be  fatal  to  the  hopes  of  posterity  as  well  as  to  those  of 
his  own  generation.  As -we  can  perceive  now  Mr.  Adams 
had  utterly  mistaken  the  probable  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect.  He  had  labored  all  his  life  to  bring  the  democratic 
principle  of  equaUty  into  such  a  relation  with  science  and 


78  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

education  that  it  would  yield  itself  into  becoming,  or 
being  formed  into,  an  efficient  instrument  for  collective 
administration.  But  this  was  striving  after  a  contradic- 
tion in  human  nature.  Education  stimulated  the  desire 
for  wealth,  and  the  desire  for  wealth  reacted  on  applied 
science,  thus  making,  in  the  language  of  my  brother  Henry, 
after  1830,  ''when  the  great  development  of  physical 
energies  began,  all  school  teaching,"  that  is  to  say  all 
the  education  which  Mr.  Adams  strove  to  stimulate, 
learn  ''  to  take  for  granted  that  man's  progress  in 
mental  energy  is  measured  by  his  capture  of  physical 
forces,  amounting  to  some  fifty  million  steam  horse 
power  from  coal.  .  .  .  He  cares  little  what  becomes 
of  all  this  new  power,  he  is  satisfied  to  know  .  .  . 
that  his  mind  has  learned  to  control  them."  In  short, 
Mr.  Adams  in  fact  stimulated  an  education  of  waste, 
and  what  he  sought  for  was  an  education  of  con- 
servation. But  an  education  of  conservation  was  con- 
trary to  the  instinct  of  greed  which  dominat-^d  the  demo- 
cratic mind,  and  impelled  it  to  insist  on  the  pillage  of 
the  public  by  the  privaie  man. 

And  it  was  precisely  here  that  Mr.  Adams  fell  a  victim 
to  that  fallacy  which  underlies  the  whole  theory  of  modern 
democracy —  that  it  is  possible  by  education  to  stimulate 
the  selfish  instinct  of  competition,  which  demands  that 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       79 

each  man  should  strive  to  bt^ttor  hinnKc'^  at  the  cost  of  his 
neighbor,  so  as  to  coincide  with  the  moral  principle  that 
all  should  labor  for  tfie  common  good.  The  one,  as  Mr. 
Adams  found,  meant  Jackson  and  war,  the  other  meant, 
or  possibly  under  another  order  of  society  might  be  made 
to  mean,  Jesus  Christ's  kingdom  and  peace.  But  Mr. 
Adams  found  by  sad  experience  that  the  statesman  and 
moralist  cannot  combine  the  two. 

To  me  this  supplication  of  my  ancestor,  which  was  to  be 
his  requiem,  is  unutterably  sad.  The  old  man  knew  that 
he  was  dying  and  that  he  left  the  work,  which  he  had 
hoped  to  do,  undone.  Was  it  through  his  own  fault,  or 
because  God  had  betrayed  him,  —  or  was  there  no  God  ? 
This  much,  at  least  he  knew,  on  that  Sunday  morning : 
Instead  of  leaving  his  country  a  land  of  peace  and  freedom, 
as  he  had  trusted  that  he  might,  he  left  her  facing  dis- 
union and  war.  To  me  his  words  are  an  epitome  of  the 
lamentation  of  mankind  through  all  the  ages,  at  the  fate 
of  their  efforts  to  ameUorate  their  lot  on  earth. 

On  Mr.  Adams  the  irrevocable  blow  had  fallen  in  the 
election  of  1828,  and  this  is  how  he  viewed  that  social 
revolution,  and  how  it  affected  him,  and  how  it  still 
affects  us,  and  how  it  may  well  affect  the  world  forever- 
more. 

Since  long  before  the  birth  of  history  mankind  has 


80  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

recognized,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  that  for  them 
the  principle  of  evil  has  been  embodied  in  the  instincts  of 
greed  and  avarice  which  are  the  essence  of  competition, 
and  which  are,  perhaps,  the  strongest  of  human  passions. 
This  lust  for  wealth  or  wealth's  equivalent,  the  primitive 
man  personified  in  some  malignant  demon  who  fostered 
wars  and  pests,  and  who,  if  left  to  work  without  hindrance, 
would  make  the  world  a  waste.  Hence  the  origin  of 
municipal  law.  For  law  is  nothing  but  a  series  of  regu- 
lations imposed  on  the  strong  for  the  protection  of  the 
weak,  else  would  the  weak  be  speedily  annihilated  by  the 
sword,  or  enslaved  by  conquest. 

But  no  code  of  human  origin  has  been  satisfactory 
because  it  has  been  the  work  of  the  strong  and  has  con- 
sciously, for  the  most  part,  favored  their  interests,  at  the 
cost  of  the  weak.  Therefore  none  have  worked  justice. 
And  consequently  man  has  always  yearned  for  a  moral 
law  which  should  reflect  the  thought  of  a  supreme,  benev- 
olent being,  by  whose  means  even-handed  justice  should 
be  done.  Such  was  the  vision  which  Mr.  Adams  harbored 
and  which  he  explained  in  the  letter  to  Mr.  Edwards 
of  Andover  which  I  have  quoted.  But  this  was  not 
all  of  the  puritan's  dream.  Mr.  Adams  knew  as  a 
practical  man  that  nothing  breeds  war  as  does  want  or 
temptation.     Thus  were  the  barbarian  incursions  on  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       81 

Roman  Empire  stimulated,  and  thus  was  projected 
the  attack  of  England  on  Spain,  in  the  West  Indies.  But 
these  peoples  were  under  pressure ;  never  since  the  world 
was  made,  had  any  community  been  so  favored  as  was  the 
American  by  the  gift  by  Providence  of  what  was  practi- 
cally, for  them,  an  unhmited  store  of  wealth,  which,  for 
many  generations,  would  raise  them  above  the  pres- 
sure of  any  competition  which  would  be  Ukely  to  en- 
gender war.  The  only  serious  problem  for  them  to  solve, 
therefore,  was  how  to  develop  this  gift  on  a  collective, 
and  not  on  a  competitive  or  selfish  basis. 

Dominant  private  interests  as  a  motor  would  be  fatal. 
Mr.  Adams  beUeved  when  he  entered  the  presidency  that 
this  task  might  be  done  by  an  honest  executive,  relatively 
easily,  were  he  supported  by  an  intelUgent  and  educated 
civil  service,  who  should  hold  their  places  permanently, 
who  should  be  true  pubUc  servants,  and  who  should^  be 
able  to  devote  their  whole  time,  energy,  and  thought  to 
the  work.  Were  a  single  capitaUstic  or  speculative  class 
to  get  control,  the  interest  of  the  whole  must  be  sacrificed 
to  the  few  and  ancient  injustice  must  prevail. 

For  the  type  of  government  which  Mr.  Adams  contem* 
lated  had  necessarily  to  be  one  capable  of  conducting  a 
complex  organism  on  scientific  principles.  The  rule 
therefore  must  be  rigid  that  pubUc  office  should  be  a  trust 


82    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  be  won  and  held  by  merit  alone.  It  so  chanced  that 
John  McLean  of  Ohio  had  been  appointed  Postmaster 
General  in  1821,  a  place  which  controlled  more  patronage 
and  had  more  poHtical  influence  than  any  other  office 
under  government,  and  McLean,  being  an  able  man  and  a 
good  administrator,  had  raised  his  department  to  a  level 
of  efficiency  never  attained  before.  But  McLean  was  an 
unscrupulous  pohtician  and  an  adherent  of  Jackson  and 
Calhoun,  and  therefore  bitterly  hostile  to 'Henry  Clay 
and  to  the  whole  administration,  of  which  Clay  was 
recognized  as  being  the  creator.  Clay,  though  a  good 
practical  political  manager,  was  an  honest  and  a  loyal  man, 
besides  being  a  gentleman,  and  Clay  understood  the  situa- 
tion and  remonstrated,  pointing  out  that  however  im- 
proper it  might  be  for  a  president  to  use  the  civil  service 
for  selfish  purposes,  it  was  worse  for  him  to  permit  his 
adversary  so  to  abuse  it.  But  although  Mr.  Adams 
admitted  the  soundness  of  this  reasoning  in  theory,  he 
was  totally  incapable  of  reducing  it  to  practice.  He 
could  not  divest  himself  of  the  notion  that  in  dismissing 
an  official,  he  was  judging  his  own  cause,  and  if  there 
were  a  doubt,  he  must  decide  against  himself .  Therefore, 
though  finally  convinced  of  McLean's  treachery,  he  let 
him  remain  in  office  until  General  Jackson  rewarded  him 
by  first  offering  him  a  seat  in  his  cabinet  and  then  making 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       83 

him  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court.  At  length  Mr.  Adams 
conceded  "that  the  conduct  of  McLean  has  been  of  deep 
and  treacherous  duphcity."  Yet  still  he  allowed  him  to 
remain.  And  he  did  so  because  he  could  not  bring  him- 
self to  fight  his  enemy  with  his  own  weapons.  To  have 
done  so  would  have  been  in  his  eyes  to  violate  his  covenant 
with  God.  Moreover,  as  a  man,  he  could  not  have  com- 
peted with  Jackson  for  the  "spoils."  Therefore  the  tide 
closed  over  him  with  hardly  a  ripple. 

In  the  election  of  1828  Adams  was  defeated  by  a 
majority  of  more  than  two  to  one  in  the  electoral  college, 
and  he  retired  from  office  with  what  constancy  he  might, 
though  he  well  knew  that  he  had  in  vain  sacrificed  himself 
and  his  friends  to  his  rehance  on  Providence,  in  spite 
of  the  entreaties  of  all  who  wished  him  well,  especially 
of  Mr.  Clay.  Even  at  that  early  moment  he  saw  in 
glaring  distinctness  what  had  happened,  and  what  must 
be  the  result  of  the  abandonment  by  God  of  the  American 
people.  On  the  last  day  of  the  year  Clay  and  he  had  a 
sombre  interview.  "Mr.  Clay  spoke  to  me  with  great 
concern  of  the  prospects  of  the  country  —  the  threats  of 
disunion  from  the  South,  and  the  grasping  after  all  the 
pubUc  lands,  which  are  disclosing  themselves  in  the 
Western  States." 

Nothing  in  later  human  experience  could  fit  more 


84    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

exactly  into  Henry's  theory  of  the  degradation  of  energy 
than  this  picture  of  the  fall  of  the  Adams  administration 
of  1828,  because  we  have  so  exact  a  standard  of  comparison 
by  which  to  measure  it.  When  the  constitution  had  been 
adopted  and  the  first  administration  organized,  General 
Washington's  personaUty  had  been  so  commanding 
that  he  had  raised,  as  it  were,  the  whole  nation  to  his  own 
level,  by  a  sort  of  miracle  of  inherent  strength ;  but  after 
General  Washington  died,  the  democratic  system  of 
averages  began  its  work,  and  the  old  inequality  sank  to  a 
common  level.  By  1828,  a  level  of  degradation  had  been 
reached,  and  it  was  the  level  of  Jackson.  Therefore  the 
fall  in  intelligence, and  intellectual  energy  of  the  demo- 
cratic community,  in  twenty-five  years,  had  exactly 
corresponded  to  the  interval  which  separated  George 
Washington  intellectually,  from  Andrew  Jackson.  In 
short,  it  had  been  terrifying,  and  so  Mr.  Adams,  who 
perfectly  appreciated  the  catastrophe,  felt  it. 

Mr.  Adams,  in  1832,  sadly  admitted  to  himself  how  he 
had  imagined  'Hhis  federative  Union  was  to  last  for  ages. 
I  now  disbelieve  its  duration  for  twenty  years,  and 
doubt  its  continuance  for  five."  Mr.  Adams'  estimate  of 
time  was  close,  almost  as  close  as  Henry's  has  been  in 
*' Phase." 

AUke,  from  Mr.  Adams'  point  of  view  or  from  ours,  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  HENRY  ADAMS      85 

test  had  been  crucial.  Democracy  had  failed  to  justify 
itself.  Man  alone,  unaided  by  a  supernatural  power, 
could  not  resist  the  pressure  of  self-interest  and  of 
greed.  He  must  yield  to  the  temptation  of  competition. 
As  Saint  Paul  said  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  ''For 
I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward  man : 

"  But  I  see  another  law  in  my  members,  warring  against 
the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into  captivity  to 
the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my  members." 

And  so  it  has  always  been.  Competition  is  the  law  of 
the  flesh,  and  in  a  contest  between  the  flesh  and  the 
spirit,  in  the  end  the  flesh  must  prevail. 

"O  wretched  man  that  I  am !  who  shall  deUver  me  from 
the  body  of  this  death?" 

Above  this  level  of  servitude  to  "the  flesh,"  or  competi- 
tion, democracy  could  not  rise.  On  the  contrary  democ- 
racy then  deified  competition,  preaching  it  as  the  highest 
destiny  and  true  duty  of  man.  And  Mr.  Adams  himself 
found  to  his  horror  that  he,  who  had  worshipped  education 
and  science,  had  unwittingly  ministered  to  the  demon. 
In  that  case,  however  innocently,  he  must  have  been 
guilty.  He  had  furthered  science  with  all  his  might.  He 
did  so  still,  even  to  the  death.  Was  he  to  blame?  On 
the  other  hand  there  was  the  alternative  of  admitting 
that  there  was  no  God,  no  conscious  ruler  of  the  universe, 


86     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

no  unity,  and  no  immortality.     Better  than  to  face  this 
alternative  were  infinite  and  eternal  self-abasement. 

All  this  Mr.  Adams  had  endured,  and  he  insisted  in  his 
Diary  that  had  he  been  endowed  with  the  genius  to  ade- 
quately relate  what  he  had  seen  and  suffered  during  his 
life,  he  would  have  converted  the  most  recalcitrant  to 
the  "law."  In  fact,  he  would  have  influenced  no  one, 
more  than  did  Saint  Paul.  Men  are  not  swayed  by  words 
but  by  impinging  forces,  and  by  suffering.  Christ  taught 
that  we  should  love  our  enemies.  To  compete  success- 
fully the  flesh  decrees  that  we  must  kill  them.  And  the 
flesh  prevails. 


CHAPTER  IV 
The  Heritage  op  Henry  Adams 

UNLESS  my  memory  fails  me  it  must  have  been  in 
1884  that  Mr.  Scudder,  who  was  at  that  time  editing 
for  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Company,  asked  me 
to  prepare  for  him  a  volume  on  Massachusetts,  for  the 
Commonwealth  Series,  which  should  be  ready  in  two 
years.  I  told  Mr.  Scudder  that  I  would  do  what  I  could, 
if  he  wished  it,  but  that  I  had  faint  hopes  of  success,  for 
I  found  it  impossible  to  write  to  order.  K  I  tried  so  to 
write,  I  always  found  myself  to  be  only  an  amanuensis, — 
a  clerk  who  held  a  pen,  it  is  true,  but  one  who  wrote  down 
the  thoughts  of  a  being  over  whom  he  had  no  control, 
and  who  often  thought  thoughts  which  astonished,  not 
to  say  alarmed  me. 

Mr.  Scudder  declined  to  take  me  seriously,  but  laugh- 
ingly rejoined  that  he  would  assume  that  risk  if  I  would 
go  ahead.  I  said  no  more,  but  went  ahead  for  two  years, 
and  at  the  end  of  that  time  I  brought  Mr.  Scudder  my 
copy,  saying  to  him :  "My  worst  apprehensions  have  been 
reaUzed.  It  won't  do  for  you.  I  knew  it  would  not 
when  I  began."    Mr.  Scudder  civilly  took  my  manuscript, 

87 


88    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

read  it  and  gave  it  me  back,  saying:  ''You  were  right. 
It  won't  do,  but  I  shall  recommend  the  firm  to  publish  it 
all  the  same."  And  so  he  did,  and  thus  I  became  the 
author  of  the  "Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,"  which 
greatly  scandaUzed  all  the  reputable  historians  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  elsewhere,  but  none,  I  fear,  more  than  my 
own  brother  Charles. 

This,  however,  was  only  the  beginning  of  my  experience 
with  Massachusetts  theology,  which  the  orthodox  assured 
me  I  did  not  comprehend.  For  in  writing  that  book,  I 
had  raised  within  me  a  devouring  curiosity  to  understand, 
if  I  could,  sundry  problems  which  I  have  since  dealt 
with  in  the  preface  to  a  subsequent  volume  called  "The 
Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay,"  which  intimately  con- 
cerns Henry,  for  had  it  not  been  for  him,  that  book  would 
never  have  seen  the  light.  After  printing  the  "Eman- 
cipation," as  soon  as  I  could  command  the  time,  I  began 
my  work  on  my  new  venture  and  read  theology  backward 
to  the  schoolmen  and  the  crusades,  and  then  I  went  to 
Europe  to  try  to  find  something  on  the  spot.  I  looked  at 
countless  churches  and  castles  and  battlefields,  and  at 
last  I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  must  go  to  Palestine. 
That  same  summer  I  came  home  and  married,  explaining 
to  the  woman  who  consented  to  share  my  fortunes,  which 
were  likely  to  be  none  of  the  most  brilliant,  as  I  had 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       89 

explained  to  Mr.  Scudder,  that  I  was  eccentric  almost  to 
madness,  and  that,  if  she  married  me,  she  must  do  so  on 
her  own  responsibihty  and  at  her  own  risk.  Like  Mr. 
Scudder,  she  seemed  to  regard  this  as  a  kind  of  poor  joke, 
but,  in  the  end,  she  foimd  it  serious  enough.  And,  like 
Mr.  Scudder,  she  bore  the  consequences  of  her  bargain 
with  patience,  and  wandered  with  me  imcomplaining  over 
half  the  earth,  going  in  succession  to  England,  to  France, 
to  Germany,  to  Algeria,  to  Italy,  to  Egypt,  to  Syria,  to 
Turkey,  to  India,  to  Russia,  to  the  West  Indies,  and  to 
Mexico. 

And  as  I  wandered,  and  looked  at  the  remains  of  the 
past  and  considered  the  topography  of  the  lands  I  had 
visited,  ideas  came  to  me  as  wide  as  the  poles  from  what  I 
had  previously  supposed  such  ideas  could  be.  I  can  see 
myself  now  as  I  stood  one  day  amidst  the  ruins  of  Baal- 
bek, and  I  can  still  feel  the  shock  of  surprise  I  then  felt, 
when  the  conviction  dawned  upon  me,  which  I  have  since 
heard  denounced  as  a  monstrous  free  silver  invention, 
that  the  fall  of  Rome  came  about  by  a  competition  between 
slave  and  free  labor  and  an  inferiority  in  Roman  industry. 
The  two  combined  caused  a  contraction  of  the  currency, 
and  a  consequent  fall  in  prices  by  reason  of  a  drain  of 
silver  to  the  East,  and  in  this  way  brought  on  the  panic 
described  by  Tacitus  as  occurring  under  Tiberius,  which 


90    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

was  followed  by  the  adulteration  of  the  denarius  under 
Nero. 

When  I  had  thus  gathered,  as  I  thought,  enough 
material  for  my  immediate  wants,  we  came  home,  and 
I  established  myself  in  my  father's  old  house  in  Quincy, 
and  I  set  myself  to  digest  the  chaos  in  my  mind,  but  I 
soon  found  that  to  be  a  far  more  arduous  undertaking  than 
I  had  looked  for,  and  it  was  more  than  two  years  before  I 
had  brought  my  theory  into  anything  Uke  a  concrete  form. 

In  the  midst  of  my  labors  the  panic  of  1893  broke  out 
and  I  found  my  private  affairs,  with  those  of  my  brothers 
John  and  Charles,  seriously  involved.  Not  knowing 
what  else  to  do,  I  telegraphed  to  my  brother  Henry, 
who  was  spending  the  summer  in  Switzerland  with  Senator 
and  Mrs.  Cameron,  to  come  to  me  at  Quincy,  as  no  one 
knew  what  might  happen  and  I  feared  the  worst,  and 
this  although  Henry  himself  was  not  in  the  least  affected 
by  our  indiscretions.  And  Henry,  Hke  the  good  fellow 
and  the  good  brother  he  was,  answered  my  telegram  and 
letter  in  person,  and  stayed  with  me  in  Quincy,  to  my 
huge  delight.  I  can  see  him  now  as  I  look  out  of  my 
window,  as  he  used  to  stroll  in  the  garden  toward  sunset. 

But  I  had  something  else  beside  my  pecuniary  em- 
barrassment to  talk  about.  I  had  my  incomplete 
manuscript  and  Henry  in  my  house,  and  I  had  no  mind 


THE  HERITAOE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       91 

to  lose  what  was  to  me  such  an  invaluable  opportunity. 
So  one  day,  when  we  were  relatively  at  leisure,  I  produced 
my  potential  book  and  said  to  Henry:  "Please read  this 
manuscript  for  me  and  tell  me  whether  it  is  worth  printing 
or  whether  it  is  quite  mad.  Probably  there  is  nothing 
of  value  in  it.  But  I  want  to  know  the  fact,  and  you  are 
far  saner  than  I.  All  the  family  know  it  and  frankly 
say  so."  And  Henry,  like  the  angel  he  was,  took  the  half 
legible  sheets  and 'read  them  carefully,  and  then  he  said 
to  me  one  day,  "Brooks,  your  book  is  good  and  worth 
printing,  but  I  must  warn  you,  it  will  cost  you  dear. 
I  know  not  if  you  have  any  poUtical  or  other  ambi- 
tions, but  this  will  be  their  death  blow.  The  gold-bugs 
will  never  forgive  you.  You  are  monkeying  with  a 
dynamo." 

"Very  good,"  said  I.  "That  is  what  I  want  to  know. 
I  am  not  asking  whether  my  book  will  lead  to  fortune, 
but  whether  it  is  sound  history  and  philosophy  or  whether 
it  is  the  dream  of  a  maniac."  "Your  book  is  not  the 
dream  of  a  maniac,"  said  he.  "It  is  an  attempt  at  the 
philosophy  of  history,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  it 
sound.  But,  I  repeat,  you  had  better  not  publish. 
You  must  expect  no  open  support  from  me.  I  have  no 
vocation  for  martyrdom.  And  you  will  be  attacked  far 
worse  than  you  were  attacked  for  the  'Emancipation.' " 


92    THE  DEGRADATION  OP  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

''So  be  it,"  said  I.  "I  have  no  ambition  to  compete 
with  Daniel  Webster  as  the  jackal  of  the  vested  interests. 
And,  as  for  me,  I  am  of  no  earthly  importance.  I  had 
rather  starve  and  rot  and  keep  the  privilege  of  speaking 
the  truth  as  I  see  it,  than  of  holding  all  the  offices  that 
capital  has  to  give  from  the  presidency  downward. 
What  troubles  me  is  this.  I  should  hke  to"  have  some 
credit  for  what  I  have  done,  for  I  have  worked  hard. 
Supposing  I  publish,  as  the  world  is  now,  no  matter 
how  I  may  protest  or  what  I  may  say,  or  what  evidence 
I  may  give,  I  shall  be  charged  with  having  written  a  free 
silver  squib.  These  gold-bugs  are  not  historians  nor  do 
they  care  for  truth.  What  they  want  is  success  no  matter 
how  it  comes.  They  could  not  comprehend  if  they  would, 
nor  would  they  if  they  could,  nor  would  any  of  the  en- 
dowed imiversities  admit,  that  no  man  could  bring  to- 
gether such  a  mass  of  complicated  evidence  in  the  time 
allowed  by  the  pressure  of  a  political  campaign.  And 
moreover,"  I  continued,  ''you  must  admit  that  history 
gives  me  no  loophole  for  escape,  supposing  I  tell  the  truth. 
The  course  of  events  from  the  crusades,  and  long  before, 
leads  in  direct  sequence  to  the  present  crisis,  and  I  cannot 
avoid  it  or  alter  it.    It  is  there.    What  can  I  do?" 

"Of  that,  you  must  be  the  judge,"  said  he.     "I  have 
given  you  fair  warning.     The  wisest  thing  you  can  do 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       93 

for  your  own  interests  now  or  hereafter,  is  to  hold  your 
tongue.  I  shall  hold  mine,  for  I  do  not  intend  to  mix  in 
any  poUtical  scrape  of  yours.     Don't  think  it." 

To  this  I  rejoined :  "Don't  you  see,  Henry,  how  illogical 
you  are  ?  Here  have  I,  for  years,  been  preparing  a  book 
to  show  how  strong  hereditary  personal  characteristics 
are,  while  the  world  changes  fast,  and  that  a  type  must 
rise  or  fall  according  as  it  is  adjusted  to  its  environment. 
It  is  seldom  that  a  single  family  can  stay  adjusted  through 
three  generations.  That  is  a  demonstrable  fact.  It  is 
now  full  four  generations  since  John  Adams  wrote  the 
constitution  of  Massachusetts.  It  is  time  that  we 
perished.  The  world  is  tired  of  us.  We  have  only  sur- 
vived because  our  ancestors  lived  in  times  of  revolution. 
Both  our  grandfather  and  our  great  grandfather  were 
obnoxious  to  the  gold-bugs  of  their  time.  I  should  hardly 
be  true  bred,  were  I  loved  by  those  of  mine.  You 
remember  what  John  Quincy  Adams  wrote  to  his  father 
when  he  remonstrated  with  him,  as  you  remonstrate 
with  me.  'I  have  heard  of  a  highway  robber  who,  upon 
going  to  the  scaffold  was  asked,  why  he  had  not  been 
deterred  from  leading  such  a  life,  by  fear  of  the  halter.' 
He  answered  :  '  It  is  only  one  disease  that  we  are  more 
subject  to  than  others.'  Elsewhere  he  added  philosophi- 
cally, 'Man  can  only  be  what  God  and  nature  made  him.' 


94  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

And  SO  John  Quincy  Adams  went  on  to  meet  his  fate. 
You  know  you  think  that  fate  tragic.  And  so  I  must 
take  my  chances.  They  won't  be  briUiant,  of  that  be 
sure."  "If  that  is  your  view,"  said  he,  ''go  on  and  take 
your  fate,  and  God  be  with  you,  only  I  have  no  taste 
that  way.  My  connections  he  elsewhere.  But  my  advice 
to  you  is  that  if  you  are  resolved  to  publish,  as  I  think 
you  are  justified  in  doing,  choose  rather  a  publisher  in 
London  than  here.  In  London  there  is  a  possibility 
that  they  may  take  you  seriously.  Here  certainly  they 
will  not.  Passions  are  running  too  strong,  and  the  gold- 
bugs  have  too  much  at  stake." 

If  I  live  forever,  I  shall  never  forget  that  summer. 
Henry  and  I  sat  in  the  hot  August  evenings  and  talked 
endlessly  of  the  panic  and  of  our  hopes  and  fears,  and  of 
my  historical  and  economic  theories,  and  so  the  season 
wore  away  amidst  an  excitement  verging  on  revolution. 
Henry,  of  course,  was  much  less  keenly  personally  inter- 
ested than  I,  but  as  he  very  frankly  says  in  his  ''Educa- 
tion," his  instincts  led  toward  silver.  My  historical 
studies  led  the  same  way,  as  well  as  my  private  situation, 
as  one  of  the  debtor  class. 

A  long  series  of  investigations  comprising  many,  many 
centuries,  had  forced  me  to  the  conclusion  that  humanity 
competes  in  various  ways,  by  war,  for  example,  in  which 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       95 

case  slavery  is  apt  to  follow  defeat,  and  by  usury,  which 
takes  the  form  of  a  struggle  between  debtor  and  creditor, 
when  slavery  may  also  be  the  fate  of  the  vanquished. 
All  of  which  I  have  stated  at  length  in  the  preface  to 
"Civilization  and  Decay,"  and  which  I  only  allude  to  here, 
because  it  serves  to  illuminate  the  working  of  Henry's 
mind,  and  shows  how  he  came  to  ''Phase."  And,  practi- 
cally, my  inference  was  this  in  1893 :  Mostly  men  work 
unconsciously,  and  perform  an  act,  before  they  can  ex- 
plain why;  often  centuries  before.  Throughout  the 
ages  it  had  been  the  favorite  device  of  the  creditor  class 
first  to  work  a  contraction  of  the  currency,  which  bank- 
rupted the  debtors,  and  then  to  cause  an  inflation  which 
created  a  rise  when  they  sold  the  property  which  they  had 
impounded.  The  question  with  me  was,  how  fully  was 
I  justified  in  applying  these  admitted  facts  of  history  to 
the  crisis  of  1893.  Beginning  with  the  panic  at  Rome 
under  Tiberius,  I  had  a  long  Ust  of  precedents  stretching 
through  the  crusades  to  the  present  time.  And  the 
common  way  for  many  centuries,  in  which  an  advance 
after  a  depression  had  been  secured,  was  by  an  adultera- 
tion or  debasement  of  the  currency,  and  at  a  later  day 
by  an  issue  of  paper.  But  the  men  who  had  usually 
conducted  such  vast  movements  had  to  be  supremely 
adapted  to  the  business. 


96       THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

We  then  here  called  them  ''gold-bugs."  The  question 
between  Henry  and  me,  as  I  then  stated  it,  was,  assuming 
the  general  law  of  the  past  to  hold,  whether  our  family 
could  keep  solvent  until  relief  came,  or  whether  we  should 
go  under  like  the  Roman  peasants  or  hke  the  British 
yeomen.  Henry  thought,  or  was  inclined  to  think,  that 
we  should  be  crushed.  I  thought  that,  with  good  luck, 
courage,  economy,  and  patience,  we  should  be  able  to 
hold  on  until  relief  in  some  form  came,  and  crawl  in  with 
the  bankers  on  the  rise.  Which,  in  fact,  we  subsequently 
did,  but  the  process  stimulated  thought.  And  it  was 
then,  as  Henry  has  pointed  out  in  his  "Education," 
that  his  great  effort  at  thought  began. 

The  immediate  effect  of  this  stimulant  to  Henry,  of 
which  I  presently  became  aware,  was  in  the  following 
winter  when  he  wrot^  as  a  "communication"  to  the 
"American  Historical  Association"  of  which  he  was  then 
president,  the  first  of  the  following  documents,  which 
is  also  the  first  of  his  contributions  to  scientific  history, 
and  I  think  one  of  the  ablest.  Afterward  he  explained 
to  me  that  he  had  written  it  as  a  sort  of  preface  or  in- 
troduction to  my  proposed  book,  which  I  was  then  making 
ready  to  print  during  the  following  spring.  "For,"  said 
he,  "  without  something  of  the  sort,  one  of  two  things  will 
happen  to  you.    Either  you  will  be  altogether  ignored 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       97 

by  the  old  expedient  of  the  'consph-acy  of  silence,'  or 
you  will  be  attacked  with  fury."  ''For,"  he  continued, 
"the  teaching  profession  is,  hke  the  church  and  the 
bankers,  a  vested  interest.  And  the  historians  will  fall 
on  any  one  who  threatens  their  stock  in  trade  quite  as 
virulently  as  do  the  bankers  on  the  silver  men.  So  you 
may  judge.  Certainly,  if  you  succeed,  history  can  no 
longer  be  taught  in  the  old  way."  No  one  before  or 
since  has  stated  the  ruthlessness  of  scientific  history  more 
pungently  and  at  the  same  time  dehcately  than  has 
Henry  in  this  paper.  He  has  shown  how  scientific 
history  can  support  no  party  and  no  interest.  It  must 
be  a  summary  of  a  complex  of  conflicting  forces.  But  my 
opinion  is  that  this  essay  went  over  the  heads  of  his 
audience  by  about  a  generation.  It  would  have  more 
chance  of  being  appreciated  now.  Then  it  was  set  down 
as  an  eccentricity  without  practical  application.  And  so 
it  was  forgotten. 

The  next  summer  I  passed  at  Quincy  in  putting 
"Civihzation  and  Decay"  through  the  press,  a  process 
which  Henry  watched  with  interest.  Before  it  appeared 
here  in  America,  I  had  sailed  for  India  and  I  saw  Henry 
no  more  for  a  year.  But  while  waiting  in  Rome  for  the 
Bombay  ship,  I  received  from  him  the  following  letter, 
which  even  then  seemed  to  me  a  criticism  of  surpassing 


98    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

interest,  and  which,  in  the  Ught  of  the  past,  seems  to  me 
now  to  excel  anything  which  was  produced  at  anywhere 
near  that  time. 

Dear  Brooks: 

I  write  you  a  hne  merely  to  say  that  I  hope  to  go  south 
next  week,  and  you  may  not  hear  from  me  again  while 
you  are  in  India.  As  far  as  I  can  see,  the  scrimmage 
is  over.  The  nations,  after  a  display  of  dreadful  bad 
manners,  are  settling  down,  afraid  to  fight.  The  gold- 
bugs  have  resumed  their  sway,  with  their  nerves  a  good 
deal  shaken,  but  their  tempers  or  their  sense  unimproved. 

Cleveland  and  Olney  have  relapsed  into  their  normal 
hog-like  attitudes  of  indifference,  and  Congress  is  dis- 
organized, stupid  and  childlike  as  ever.  Once  more  we 
are  under  the  whip  of  the  bankers.  Even  on  Cuba,  where 
popular  feeUng  was  far  stronger  than  on  Venezuela,  we 
are  beaten  and  hopeless.  .  .  . 

My  turn  will  come  next,  and  I  am  all  ready  and  glad 
to  get  through  it.  The  last  six  weeks  have  given  me 
much  to  think  about.  Were  we  on  the  edge  of  a  new  and 
last  great  centraUzation,  or  of  a  first  great  movement 
of  disintegration?  There  are  facts  on  both  sides;  but 
my  conclusion  rather  is  —  and  this  is  what  satiates  my 
instinct  for  life  —  that  our  so-called  civihzation  has 
shown  its  movement,  even  at  the  centre,  arrested.  It 
has  failed  to  concentrate  further.  Its  next  effort  may 
succeed,  but  it  is  more  likely  to  be  one  of  disintegration, 
with  Russia  for  the  eccentric  on  one  side  and  America 
on  the  other.  .  .  . 

In  either  case,  the  next  great  conclusive  movement 
is  likely  to  take  at  least  one  full  generation.     If,  as  I 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS       99 

think,  we  move  much  faster  than  the  Romans,  we  have 
more  ground  to  cover,  and  fewer  outside  enemies  to  fear. 
As  I  read  the  elder  Phny,  I  am  struck  by  the  astonishing 
parity  between  him  and  you.  He  came  about  a  hundred 
years  after  the  miUtary  age  ended,  and  the  poUce  age 
began.  You  write  just  eighty  years  after  the  same 
epoch.  Pliny  died  in  the  year  79.  Three  hundred  years 
afterwards  Ammianus  Marcelhnus  closed  his  history 
with  the  death  of  Valens  and  the  practical  overthrow  of 
Roman  civilization,  in  378.  Allowing  for  our  more  rapid 
movement  we  ought  still  to  have  more  than  two  hundred 
years  of  futile  and  stupid  stagnation.  I  find  twenty  too 
much  for  me. 

The  process  of  turning  a  machine  like  ours  round  a 
corner  will  be  dangerous  in  proportion  to  its  sharpness, 
but  neither  its  dangers,  nor  its  successes,  nor  its  failures 
seem  to  me  now  to  be  worth  living  to  see.  Nothing  can 
come  of  it  that  is  worth  hving  for ;  nothing  so  interesting 
as  we  have  already  seen ;  and  nothing  better  to  say. 
I  understand  that  your  book  has  been  exhausted  in 
New  York  for  some  time,  and  that  Macmillan  is  waiting 
for  more  copies.  The  longer  we  can  keep  it  working 
under  ground  the  better.  If  it  once  gets  notorious,  as 
it  well  may,  under  the  blessed  pressure  of  the  gold  standard 
which  turns  even  defeats  into  victories  for  us,  I  want 
you  to  print  it  in  a  cheap  form  for  popular  reading.  It 
is,  as  I  have  always  told  you,  the  Bible  of  Anarchy.  God 
knows  what  side  in  our  politics  it  would  help,  for  it  cuts 
all  equally,  but  it  might  help  man  to  know  himself  and 
hark  back  to  God.  For  after  all  man  knows  mighty  httle, 
and  may  some  day  learn  enough  of  his  own  ignorance  to  fall 
down  again  and  pray.  Not  that  I  care.  Only,  if  such  is 
God's  will,  and  Fate  and  Evolution  —  let  there  be  God  ! 


100    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Anyway  I  have  been  correcting  and  annotating  a  copy  in 
case  you  want  my  suggestions  for  your  next  edition.  .  .  . 
But  just  now  the  gold-bugs  have  got  their  loans  and 
foreign  pohcy,  and  the  next  presidency  safe,  as  far  as  I 
can  see,  and  I  shall  go  fishing. 

I  go  with  the  easier  temper  because  I  see  that  what  I 

want  is  really  their  right  game,  and  what  they  get  is 

merely  a  prolongation  of  the  anarchy  now  prevaihng. 

Not  one  question  has  been  settled.     All  the  old,  and 

several  new  ones,  are  as  active  as  ever,  and  more  virulent. 

Our  revolt  has  been  a  slave  insurrection,  but  we  have  given 

our  masters  a  mauvais  quart  d'heure,  and  cost  them  a 

very  pretty  sum  of  hard  money.     And  above  all,  I  have 

had  my  fun. 

Ever  yours, 

Henry  was  as  good  as  his  word.  He  did  annotate  a  copy 
of  the  London  edition  which  I  now  have  before  me,  and 
which  served  to  help  me  in  the  preparation  of  the  Mac- 
millan  edition  which  appeared  the  next  year,  but  he  did 
more  than  this.  He  conceived  the  idea  that  I  should 
pubUsh  a  French  translation,  and  for  that  purpose  he 
annotated  a  copy  of  the  Macmillan  edition,  elaborately, 
and  never  rested  until  I  went  to  Paris  and,  near  him, 
superintended  the  translation  and  publication  of  an 
edition  in  1899,  which  I  tried  to  make  as  exhaustive  and 
as  exact  as  possible.  But  even  this  did  not  satisfy  him. 
He  complained  to  me  that  my  preface  was  imperfect 
and  that  it  should  be  more  scientific.    "Don't  you  see. 


THE  SURITAOE  of  HENRY  ADAMS      101 

Brooks,"  he  would  say  to  me  again  and  again,  as  he  sat 
in  my  house  in  Paris,  ''that  you,  with  your  lawyer's 
method,  only  state  sequences  of  fact,  and  explain  no 
causes?  Granting  that  your  sequences  are  correct, 
and  I  beheve  they  are,  and  that  your  law  is  sound,  which 
I  am  wiUing  to  suppose,  you  do  not  tell  us  why  man  has 
been  a  failure,  and  could  be  nothing  but  a  failure.  You 
only  show  that  he  has  failed. 

"To  leave  human  development  where  you  do  is  hardly 
satisfactory  nor  is  it  surely  scientific  history.  If  there 
be  a  God  and  a  consequent  unity,  man  should  confess  him. 
Then  indeed  he  may  have  a  chance  of  steady  advancement 
toward  perfection.  But,  if  there  be  no  imity  and  on  the 
contrary  only  multipUcity,  he  can  only  develop  into  that 
chaos  of  which  he  forms  a  part.  Therefore,"  he  would 
say,  "you  should  write  a  scientific  summary." 

But  such  a  task  was  beyond  me.  Therefore,  I  declined 
Henry's  suggestion  to  join  him  in  Paris  and  work  at  the 
scheme  which  he  proposed,  and  went  back  to  my  old  life 
in  America.  From  that  time  Henry  lost  interest  in  my 
further  publications,  though  he  continued  faithfully  to 
read  them,  but  always  with  the  same  complaint,  "that 
I  got  nowhere."  On  the  other  hand  he  took  up  "scientific 
history"  himself,  and  soon  became  inmiersed  in  it.  Nor 
could  it  have  been  otherwise  with  a  man  of  his  energy  of 


102  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

mind.  The  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  are  the  most 
fascinating  portions  of  the  Ufe  of  the  modern  world  and 
Henry  luxuriated  in  them.  The  result  may  be  read  in 
"Mont  St.  Michel  and  Chartres,"  and  while  I  have 
permitted  myself  to  criticise  some  aspects  of  that  book,  I 
conceive  it  to  be,  on  the  whole,  by  far  the  greatest  attempt 
at  a  historical  generalization  that  exists  in  any  language. 
Meanwhile  he  was  reading  pure  science  with  all  the 
avidity  of  John  Quincy  Adams  when  he  prepared  his 
"Weights  and  Measures,"  and  when  I  visited  Washington, 
as  I  did  each  winter,  I  went  straight  to  Henry's  house  and 
we  plunged  into  a  talk  which  was  apt  to  last  till  near 
morning.  That  was  in  the  beginning,  but  as  time  elapsed 
I  noticed  a  change  come  over  him,  which  troubled  me. 
His  nerves  seemed  to  lose  their  firmness.  He  complained 
that  "he  could  not  be  agitated,"  and  that  if  we  talked 
late,  he  could  not  sleep.  And  so  he  came  rather  to  shun 
me,  seeming  to  prefer  women's  society,  in  which  he  could 
be  amused  and  tranquillized.  Notwithstanding  this  slight 
estrangement,  I  well  knew  that  his  scientific  studies 
went  on,  and  I  awaited  with  anxiety  the  result.  For 
a  scientific  theory  is  worthless  unless  applied  to  facts, 
and  although  I  was  deHghted  with  "Mont  St.  Michel  and 
Chartres,"  I  felt  it  to  be  but  one  third  of  his  task  were  he 
to  be  understood.     Another  volume  ought  to  take  him  to 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      103 

the  Reformation,  and  a  third  to  our  own  day,  I  hoped  to 
our  grandfather,  on  whom  we  had  labored  together  and 
on  whom  I  had  failed,  because  probably,  I  did  not  under- 
stand the  scientific  side  of  my  subject.  If  any  one  could 
succeed  with  him,  it  would  be  Henry. 

But  Henry,  after  ''Mont  St.  Michel,"  drifted  ofif  into  his 
"Education,"  in  which,  as  I  warned  him  to  weariness,  I 
feared  that  he  had  attempted  too  much.  I  told  him  that 
he  had  tried  to  mix  science  with  society  and  that  the 
public  would  never  understand  his  scientific  theory.  He 
insisted  that  he  could*make  his  theory  plain.  And  then, 
before  he  had  time  to  go  further,  he  had  his  illness,  and, 
to  my  eternal  regret,  he  will  never  now  go  on  to  fill  the 
gap  which  he  has  left.  And,  for  that  reason,  I  am  making 
this  meagre  effort. 

Regarded  philosophically,  Henry's  life  is,  in  effect,  a 
continuation  of  his  grandiather's ;  he  is  part  of  a  large 
intellectual  movement  and  his  life  is,  to  a  certain  degree, 
mixed  with  my  own.  I  try,  as  well  as  I  can,  to  put  them 
all  together.  My  grandfather  speaks  for  himself.  My 
books,  at  best,  are  but  a  poor  epitome  of  what  would  have 
been  Henry's  monumental  exposition  to  sustain  and 
prove  his  philosophy,  but  I  have  no  better  to  offer. 

I  have  now  ended  my  review  of  the  facts  which,  taken 
in  the  connection  with  those  related  in  Henry's  Auto- 


104    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

biography,  explain,  as  I  hope,  the  nature  of  the  environ- 
ment which,  at  a  given  moment,  produced  the  phe- 
nomenon of  Henry's  mind  in  a  typical  New  England 
family  like  that  of  my  father.  But  in  order  that  this 
intellectual  inheritance  as  a  sequence  may  be  incisive,  I 
apprehend  that  I  should  at  the  close  of  my  story  present 
a  summary,  since,  as  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out, 
generalizations  of  this  description  resemble  the  fragments 
of  a  mutilated  inscription  which  cannot  be  read  until 
the  scattered  stones  have  been  set  in  a  predetermined 
order.  In  this  case  the  work  is  the  easier  because  we  are 
concerned  with  the  rise  and  progress  of  American  democ- 
racy, and  the  beginning  of  the  movement  as  well  as  the 
form  it  took  and  the  standard  which  must  serve  as  the 
measure  of  its  advance  or  recession  in  intellectual  power, 
is  to  be  computed  according  to  the  personality  of  George 
Washington,  who,  without  doubt,  stands  at  the  apex  of 
democratic  civilization. 

Thus,  the  model  and  the  standard  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  was  George  Washington,  and  to  him  it  was  from  the 
very  outset  clear  that,  if  the  democratic  social  system 
were  capable  of  progression  upward  to  a  level  at  which  it 
could  hope  to  amehorate  the  lot  of  men  on  earth,  it  must 
tend,  at  least,  to  produce  an  average  which,  if  it  did  not 
attain  to  the  eminent  abihty  of  the  first  President,  might 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      105 

at  least  be  capable  of  understanding  and  appreciating 
his  moral  altitude. 

In  every  civilization  there  are,  as  Saint  Paul  pointed 
out,  two  principles  in  conflict,  —  the  law,  or  the  moral 
principle,  and  the  flesh,  or  the  evil  principle;  and  the 
flesh  is,  in  a  general  way,  incarnated  in  the  principle  of 
competition,  which,  rooted  in  the  passions  of  greed,  avarice, 
and  cruelty,  is  apt  to  prevail  to  an  unendurable  degree 
unless  restrained  by  law.  And  it  is  to  regulate  and  restrain 
competition  that  human  laws  have  been  and  are  still 
devised.  Washington  had  already  formulated  in  his 
mind,  even  before  he  first  assumed  the  presidency,  an 
elaborate  theory  of  how  a  diffused  community  might  be 
built  up  into  a  consoHdated  and  efficient  unity;  and, 
stated  concisely,  his  theory  amounted  to  this,  comprising 
both  material  and  intellectual  concentration.  The  first 
requisite  was  to  suppress  competition  among  the  parts, 
that  is,  to  keep  order ;  and,  to  keep  order,  there  must  be 
a  centre  of  energy  whose  will  must  dominate.  Govern- 
ments, according  to  Washington,  are  not  accidents,  they 
are  growths,  and  growths  which  may  be  consciously 
fostered  and  stimulated,  or  smothered,  according  as  more 
or  less  intelhgence  is  generated  in  the  collective  brain. 
The  material  energy  is  collected  at  the  heart  of  the 
organism,  which  is  the  central  market  or  seat  of  exchanges, 


106  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

and  which  can  only  be  successfully  developed  at  the  point 
of  convergence  of  the  main  highways  or  arteries  of  com- 
merce, which  nourish  the  provinces.  Washington  judged 
that,  in  the  example  before  him,  the  natural  highways  or 
paths  of  least  resistance  were  the  rivers,  which,  with  their 
tributaries,  drained  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  which,  by 
a  canal,  might  be  connected  with  the  Potomac  and  there, 
at  a  point  where  bulk  had  to  be  broken,  at  their  junction 
with  ocean  navigation,  might  generate  a  capital  of  the 
first  magnitude.  The  point  he  selected  was  the  site  of 
the  present  city  of  Washington,  whose  influence,  inci- 
dentally, should  convert  Virginia  because  of  her  resources 
in  iron  and  coal  into  an  industrial  community,  and  thus 
into  a  free  state.  But  Washington's  conception  of 
national  life  and  national  progression  did  not  stop  here. 
He  felt  strongly  that  the  national  intelligence  must  keep 
pace  with  the  national  accumulation  of  wealth,  and  to 
this  end  a  national  system  of  education  should  be  crowned 
by  a  national  university,  which  should  be  the  chief  in- 
strument for  the  stimulation  of  thought.  Without  such 
an  instrument  he  doubted  if  the  standard  of  democratic 
intelligence  could  be  made  to  rise  rather  than  to  fall. 

As  I  have  already  insisted,  perhaps  to  satiety,  this 
grandiose  conception  of  Washington  broke  down  for 
several  reasons.    In  the  first  place,-  lacking  the  stimulus 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS  107 

of  his  mind,  the  community,  as  a  whole,  could  not  be 
brought  to  the  point  of  building  its  own  highways,  but 
left  their  location  and  construction  to  private  competition. 
Thus  the  Une  of  the  Ohio  and  the  Potomac,  instead  of 
becoming  the  bond  which  should  bind  North  and  South 
together,  became  the  line  of  cleavage ;  and  the  cotton  gin, 
by  causing  the  growth  of  slaves  to  become,  for  the  moment, 
more  profitable  than  the  development  of  its  iron  and  coal, 
turned  Virginia  into  a  slave  stock-farm,  thereby  making 
the  Civil  War  inevitable. 

Mr.  Adams  sought  to  vitahze  Washington's  policy 
during  his  administration,  and  failed.  Defeated  in  1828, 
no  sooner  was  the  election  a  thing  of  the  past  than  he  fell 
to  measuring,  to  satisfy  his  own  mind,  the  space  through 
which  democracy  had  fallen  during  his  own  Ufetime,  and 
he  found  the  degradation  appalling.  In  1832  Congress 
asked  John  A.  Washington  to  permit  the  body  of  General 
Washington  to  be  removed  from  Mount  Vernon  and 
entombed  under  the  Capitol.  Washington  dechned. 
Thereupon  Mr.  Adams  made  this  comment :  "I  did  wish 
that  this  resolution  might  have  been  carried  into  execution, 
but  this  wish  was  connected  with  an  imagination  that 
this  federative  Union  was  to  last  for  ages.  I  now  dis- 
beUeve  its  duration  for  twenty  years,  and  doubt  its 
continuance  for  five. ' '     In  fact,  the  Union  was  dissolved  by 


108    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

secession  in  1861,  —  precisely  twenty-nine  years,  —  which 
is  a  contraction  of  span  representing  a  fall  of  potential,  as 
Henry  would  call  it,  from  injB.nity  to  zero.  And  the  cause 
of  this  shrinkage  is  clear.  The  original  union  and  the 
original  administrative  system  of  the  government  was,  as 
far  as  so  complex  an  organism  might  be,  the  product  of 
Washington's  single  mind  and  of  his  commanding  per- 
sonaUty.  Hardly  had  Washington  gone  to  his  grave 
when  the  levelUng  work  of  the  system  of  averages,  on 
which  democracy  rests,  began.  And  it  worked  in  all  its 
parts  with  freedom  and  success.  Domestic  competition 
could  hardly  have  been  more  thorough  and  consistent. 
And  the  result  was  war  and  disunion.  Nor  has  peace 
on  a  democratic  basis  ever  been  estabUshed  in  the  South 
since.  Another  generation  passed  and  Mr.  Adams' 
grandson,  in  1870,  sat  in  the  gallery  of  Congress  and  Us- 
tened  to  the  announcement  of  Grant's  cabinet.  He  has 
recorded  his  impressions.  He  blushed  for  himself  because 
he  had  dreamed  it  to  be  possible  that  a  democratic 
republic  could  develop  the  intellectual  energy  to  raise 
itself  to  that  advanced  level  of  intelligence  which  had  been 
accepted  as  a  moral  certainty  by  Washington,  his  own 
grandfather,  and  most  of  his  grandfather's  contemporaries 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  whose  dreams  and  ideas 
he  had,  as  he  describes,  unconsciously  inherited.    He 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      109 

understood  at  length,  as  his  ancestor  had  learned,  that 
mankind  does  not  advance  by  his  own  unaided  efforts, 
and  competition,  toward  perfection.  He  does  not  auto- 
matically reaUze  unity  or  even  progress.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  reflects  the  diversity  of  nature.  It  is  the  contrast 
between  the  ideal  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  peace  and 
obedience ;  and  the  diversity  of  competition,  or,  in  other 
words,  of  war.  Democracy  is  an  infinite  mass  of  con- 
flicting minds  and  of  conflicting  interests  which,  by  the 
persistent  action  of  such  a  solvent  as  the  modern  or 
competitive  industrial  system,  becomes  resolved  into  what 
is,  in  substance,  a  vapor,  which  loses  in  collective  intel- 
lectual energy  in  proportion  to  the  perfection  of  its  ex- 
pansion. 

Another  twenty-five  years  were  to  elapse,  and  the  theory 
was  advanced  that  the  economic  centre  of  the  world  de- 
termined the  social  equilibrium,  and  that  this  international 
centre  of  exchanges  was  an  ambulatory  spot  on  the  earth's 
surface  which  seldom  remained  fixed  for  any  considerable 
period  of  time,  but  which  vibrated  back  and  forth  accord- 
ing as  discoveries  in  apphed  science  and  geography 
changed  avenues  of  communication,  and  caused  trade 
routes  to  reconverge.  Thus  Babylon  had  given  way  to 
Rome,  Rome  to  Constantinople,  Constantinople  to  Venice, 
Venice   to  Antwerp,   and  finally,  about   1810,   London 


110    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

became  the  undisputed  capital  of  the  world.  Each 
migration  represented  a  change  in  equilibrium,  and, 
therefore,  caused  a  social  convulsion.  At  the  outset 
this  theory  was  derided.  Such  theories  always  are.  But 
toward  the  period  of  the  Boer  War  it  was  suggested  that 
the  supremacy  of  London  appeared  to  be  vacillating, 
and  then  it  was  taken  more  seriously.  Indeed,  by  that 
time,  the  symptoms  had  become  pretty  convincing.  They 
had  first  been  noticed  as  far  back  as  the  panic  of  1890  in 
London,  which  ruined  the  Barings.  That  local  panic 
was  followed  by  a  contraction  which  induced  the  panic 
of  1893  at  home,  with  which  I  have  already  dealt,  and 
by  1900  there  were  symptoms  of  instability  which  sug- 
gested that  the  economic  capital  of  civilization  was 
already  tending  to  shift  toward  America.  The  relative 
production  of  pig  iron,  for  example,  was  significant. 
Nor  were  these  the  most  alarming  phenomena.  England 
betrayed  feebleness  in  the  face  of  the  attack  of  German 
competition,  which  had  been  growing  fiercer  ever  since 
the  consolidation  of  Germany  after  the  War  of  1870. 
But  if  these  facts  were  true,  and  they  could  not  be  seriously 
denied,  it  was  evident,  on  inspection,  that  civiUzation 
stood  poised  on  the  brink  of  a  portentous  crisis.  For  if 
the  centre  of  exchanges,  which  had  been  stationary  in 
London  ever  since  Waterloo,  should  migrate  either  east 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      111 

or  west,  —  either  to  New  York  or  to  Berlin,  —  a  conflict 
must  ensue  which  would  shake  the  whole  world,  since 
all  the  world  had  become  a  part  of  an  organic  whole, 
by  reason  of  the  intense  stimulation  of  movement.  No 
one,  however,  suspected  that  the  catastrophe  was  immi- 
nent. I  suggested  its  date  myself  as  probably  about 
1930,  but  no  one  took  me  seriously.  It  actually  came  in 
1914.  Alone  Henry,  in  "Phase,"  which  he  sent  me  two 
years  before  the  war  broke  out,  in  1912,  elaborated  a 
mathematical  theory  by  which  he  predicted  the  catas- 
trophe, before  the  event.  Even  I,  then,  thought  he  was 
exaggerating.  I  earnestly  refer  the  reader,  who  may  be 
interested,  to  "Phase." 

As  Henry  neared  the  end  of  his  application  of  the 
development  of  the  thirteenth  century  according  to 
scientific  historical  theory,  in  "Mont  St.  Michel  and 
Chartres,"  he  turned  more  and  more  toward  his  next  step 
in  the  "Reformation,"  on  which  he  constantly  talked 
with  me.  He  found  the  "Reformation"  most  antago- 
nistic, chiefly,  I  think,  because  of  the  Puritan  attack  on 
women;  for  it  was  during  the  Reformation  that  the 
Virgin  was  dethroned  and,  according  to  his  theory,  I 
take  it,  that  the  degradation  of  woman  began.  For  it 
is  precisely  here  that  I  wish  to  point  out  a  legal  and 
philosophical  distinction  —  one  which  hinges,  as  Henry 


112    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

explains  in  the  ''Letter  to  Teachers,"  on  the  distinction 
between  reason  and  instinct.  Now  as  a  lawyer  and  as  a 
historian,  I  insist  that  society,  as  an  organism,  has  Uttle 
or  no  interest  in  woman's  reason,  but  its  very  existence 
is  bomid  up  in  her  instincts.  Intellectually,  woman's 
reason  has  been  a  matter  of  indifference  to  men.  As  an 
intellectual  competitor  she  has  never  been  formidable; 
but  maternity  is  a  monopoly.  It  is  the  passionate  in- 
stinct which  is  the  cause  and  the  effect  of  maternity, 
and  which  enables  women  to  serve  their  great  purpose  as 
the  cement  of  society.  As  an  intellectual  being,  as  the 
modern  feminist  would  make  her,  she  has  only  the  im- 
portance of  a  degraded  boy,  though  she  is  far  more  danger- 
ous to  society  than  such  a  boy  would  be,  who  would  be 
relatively  harmless. 

It  was,  perhaps,  during  discussions  such  as  these,  that 
Henry  grew  curious  to  test  the  thought  of  the  scientific 
world,  and  Accordingly  he  wrote  toward  1910  his  ''Letter 
to  Teachers,"  which  I  then  thought,  and  think  even  more 
strongly  now  than  then,  to  have  been  the  ablest  exposition 
of  the  scientific  theory  of  the  degradation  of  energy  and 
of  the  issue  between  intellect  and  instinct  which  has  ever 
been  made.  If,  as  I  have  good  reason  to  infer,  the 
reception  which  this  httle  book  met  with  among  the 
class  to  whom  it  was  sent,  was  a  disappointment  to 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      113 

Henry,  in  so  far  as  it  left  them  indifferent,  it  had  at  least 
a  very  great  effect  on  me.  I  found,  among  other  things, 
that  if  Henry  had  written  this  essay  as  a  commentary 
upon  his  ancestor's  life  ai:id  fortunes,  it  could  not  have 
been  more  absolutely  to  the  point,  and  this  pleased  me 
the  more  and  was  to  me  the  more  remarkable  and  con- 
vincing, as  I  do  not  imagine  that  Henry  had,  when  he 
wrote  it,  John  Quincy  Adams  at  all  in  mind  as  a  text 
for  his  discourse.  I  have  only  now  to  beg  such  of  my 
readers  as  may  be  interested  in  these  questions  to  read 
my  account  of  my  ancestor's  misfortunes,  in  his  dealing 
with  democracy,  and  then  tm-n  to  Henry's  essay  es- 
pecially where,  as  for  example  on  page  156,  he  goes  into 
the  question  of  the  "degradation  of  energies" ;  or  what 
he  has  to  say  on  the  relation  of  instinct  to  reason,  when 
it  comes  to  a  consideration  of  the  feminine  question,  on 
page  203.  ''The  mere  act  of  reproduction,  which  seems 
to  have  been  the  most  absorbing  and  passionate  purpose 
of  primitive  instinct,  concerns  history  not  at  all,"  page  206. 
Certainly  it  does  not  concern  the  modern  feminist,  who 
repudiates  such  an  instinct  as  unworthy  of  a  civilized 
and  educated  modern  woman,  and  by  so  doing  annoimces 
herself  as  incapable  of  performing  the  only  function  in 
modem  society  which  has  the  least  vital  importance  to 
mankind.    I  come  now  to  the  consideration  of  "Phase," 


114  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

which  is  an  attempt  by  means  of  a  mathematical  formula, 
based  on  the  facts  of  past  events,  to  determine  the  date 
at  which  social  revolutions  may  occur ;  and  to  me  this 
effort  of  Henry's  is  of  intense,  I  may  say  of  painful,  in- 
terest. But  it  is  also  a  sphere  of  his  work  in  which  I 
feel  least  competent  to  accompany  him.  I  am  inclined 
in  "Phase"  to  surrender  my  judgment  completely  to 
his.  This  I  say  at  once  frankly.  Some  dozen  years  or 
more  before  ''Phase"  was  produced  the  theory  was  ad- 
vanced by  me  and  was  more  or  less  accepted  by  Henry 
in  the  approval  which  he  gave  in  general  to  ''CiviUzation 
and  Decay." 

Henry,  in  "Phase,"  reached  a  conclusion  which  even 
I  thought  exaggerated.  He  in  1912  named  the  year 
1917  as  the  date  at  which  a  probably  revolutionary 
acceleration  of  thought  would  take  place,  and  in  fact 
in  that  year  America  was  drawn  into  the  war  by  the  re- 
sistless attraction  of  the  British  economic  system,  and 
to-day  Great  Britain  and  America,  like  the  parts  of  some 
gigantic  saurian  which  has  been  severed  in  a  prehistoric 
contest,  seem  half  unconsciously  to  be  trying  to  unite 
in  an  economic  organism,  perhaps  to  be  controlled  by  a 
syndicate,  of  bankers  who  will  direct  the  movements  of 
the  putative  governments  of  this  enormors  aggregation 
of  vested  interests  independent  ol  the  popular  will. 


THE   HERITAGE   OF  HENRY  ADAMS  115 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  somewhat  alarming  task  of 
considering  Henry's  forecast  in  "Phase,"  of  the  world's 
possible  future.  For  though  it  is  generally  conceded 
that  the  outlook  for  civilization  is  murky,  Henry's  calcu- 
lation suggests  that  its  catastrophe  may  be  actually  at 
hand. 

Assuming  that  we  are  still  in  the  mechanical  phase, 
and  using  the  same  formula  which  he  used  in  his  estimate 
touching  the  year  1917,  Henry  finds  that  we  may  probably 
enter  the  ''ethereal  phase"  in  1921,  or  in  somewhere 
about  two  years  from  the  present  time,  when  thought 
will  reach  the  limit  of  its  possibilities.  How  such  an 
age  would  express  itself  must  be  to  most  of  us  problemat- 
ical, since,  according  to  Henry,  only  a  few  highly  trained 
and  gifted  men  will  then  be  able  to  understand  each 
other;  but  attempting  to  translate  such  hypothetical 
thought  into  ordinary  legal  or  political  terms,  the  more 
we  reflect  upon  what  we  see  going  on  about  us,  the  less 
unreasonable  such  a  limit  of  time  becomes.  Supposing 
thought  to  indeed  reach  its  limit,  and  action  to  correspond 
to  the  intensity  of  the  acceleration  of  thought,  as  it  al- 
ways hitherto  has  done,  we  reach  a  social  condition  which 
is  already  to  a  certain  degree  indicated. 

For  some  years  past  many  symptoms  seem  not  ob- 
scurely to  indicate  that  we  tend  to  sink  into  that  chaos 


116    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  democratic  mediocrity  which  Hemy  likens  to  the  ocean, 
where  waters  which  have  fallen  to  sea  level  are  engulfed, 
and  can  no  more  do  useful  work.  In  such  an  ocean 
tempests  are  generated  by  the  operations  of  usurers,  and 
such  tempests  are  apt  to  be  stilled  by  massacres,  such  as 
have  become  to  us  famiUar  of  late,  in  countries  like  Armenia. 

In  view  of  what  has  occurred  within  these  four  or  five 
years,  such  a  forecast  for  1921  now  would  be  less  astonish- 
ing than  would  a  forecast  of  what  we  now  behold  have 
been,  had  it  been  made  in  1912.  Viewed  impartially, 
we  present  the  aspect  of  a  society  in  extremely  unstable 
equilibrium,  which  is  being  attacked  on  every  hand  by 
potent  forces  from  without,  and  which  is  yet  being  preyed 
on  from  within  by  a  destructive  tumor. 

It  is  only  needful  to  glance,  for  a  single  instant,  at  the 
imbecihty  which  democracy  presented  at  Paris  in  its  efforts 
to  make  a  peace  with  Germany,  to  become  conscious  of 
the  external  pressure.  Recently,  in  New  York,  Mr.  Ga^ 
in  a  speech  admitted  that  the  war  now  closing  had  been 
an  effect  of  competition.  This  fact,  which  has  been 
patent  from  the  outset  to  every  observant  mind,  was 
at  first  hotly,  not  to  say  angrily,  denied  by  the  banking 
fraternity,  lest  they  should  be  held  responsible  therefor, 
and  thereby  restrained  in  their  action.  Since  Mr.  Gary's 
speech,  however,  the  fact  of  its  having  been  an  economic 


THE   HERITAGE   OF  HENRY  ADAMS  117 

war  may,  probably,  be  assumed  to  be  admitted.  But 
an  economic  war  is  the  fiercest  and  most  pitiless  of  all 
wars,  since  to  make  a  lasting  peace  in  competition  implies 
either  the  extermination  or  enslavement  of  the  vanquished. 
If  the  vanquished  is  to  be  conciliated,  that  is  to  say,  to 
be  restored  to  a  position  in  which  he  can  act  as  a  freeman, 
he  must  be  granted  rights  which  will  enable  him  to  com- 
pete on  equal  terms  with  the  victors,  and  the  old  con- 
ditions will  be  automatically  revived.  That  is  to  say 
there  must  be  a  still  more  bitter  struggle  within  a  genera- 
tion, —  at  furthest. 

Now  this  dilemma  is  not  easy  to  solve.  To  exterminate 
ninety  milUons  of  Germans  would  be  a  difficult  task,  even 
for  a  conqueror  hke  Jenghiz  Khan,  or  as  stem  a  Roman 
as  Cato.  With  the  modem  democratic  sentiment,  it 
probably  could  not  be  done.  Enslavement  would  be 
little,  if  any,  better.  In  the  first  place,  to  enslave  so  large 
a  part  of  humanity  is  very  expensive  because  of  the  cost 
of  maintaining  an  adequate  guard,  and  secondly,  slavery 
has  been  found,  ever  since  the  days  of  Rome,  to  decisively 
degrade  the  masters.  Not  that  the  present  standard 
of  democratic  intelHgence  needs  or  could  well  withstand 
much  degrading.  It  is  only  necessary  to  compare  the 
personnel  of  the  present  commissioners  at  Paris  with 
that  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna  after  Waterloo  to  be  as- 


118    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

sured  of  the  movement.  Nor  was  the  Congress  of  Vienna 
either  a  wonderfully  intelUgent  or  successful  body.  StUl, 
they  shone  with  brilUancy  in  comparison  with  what  we 
now  have.  Or  take,  as  an  illustration  of  the  same  phe- 
nomenon, the  commissioners  who  were  sent  by  Mr. 
Madison  to  Ghent  to  negotiate  the  peace  with  England 
in  1814,  and  they  stand  in  relation  to  the  present  Ameri- 
can delegation  at  Paris  in  pretty  much  the  same  position 
in  which  General  Washington's  cabinet  stood  to  the 
cabinet  of  Jackson.     It  is  a  subject  for  meditation. 

The  upshot  has  been  that,  because  of  this  incapacity, 
the  bankers  have  apparently  found  it  necessary  to  take 
the  settlement  of  a  peace  out  of  the  hands  of  the  nominal 
political  authorities  and  come  to  some  agreement  among 
themselves.  What  that  agreement  is  we  do  not  know, 
and  perhaps  may  never  know,  save  as  events  discover  it 
in  the  future,  but  of  this  we  may  be  certain :  it  will  be  an 
arrangement  which  will  conduce  to  the  further  dominance 
of  the  great  moneyed  interests. 

And  yet,  serious  as  this  situation  may  appear  to  be  in 
the  light  of  the  present  imstable  social  equilibrium,  it  is 
naught  beside  the  terrors  which  threaten  our  society,  as 
at  present  organized,  by  the  unsexing  of  women.  Since 
the  great  industrial  capitaUstic  movement  began  through- 
out the  modem  world  toward  1830,  the  modem  feminist 


THE   HERITAGE   OF  HENRY  ADAMS  119 

has  sought  to  put  the  woman  upon  a  basis  of  legal  equality 
at  which  she  would  be  enabled,  as  it  was  thought,  to  be- 
come the  economic  competitor  of  man.  At  length,  after 
nearly  a  century,  and  as  one  of  the  effects  of  the  recent 
war,  she  seems  to  have  succeeded  in  her  ambition.  So 
far  as  possible  the  great  sexual  instinct  has  been  weakened 
or  suppressed.  So  far  as  possible  it  is  now  ignored  sys- 
tematically in  our  education.  Woman  is  ashamed  of  her 
sex  and  imitates  the  man.  And  the  results  are  manifest 
enough  to  alarm  the  most  optimistic  and  confiding.  The 
effect  has  been  to  timi  enormous  numbers  of  women  into 
the  ranks  of  the  lower  paid  classes  of  labor,  but  far  worse, 
in  substance,  to  destroy  the  influence  of  woman  in  modem 
civilization,  save  in  so  far  as  her  enfranchisement  tends 
to  degrade  the  democratic  level  of  intelligence.  The 
woman,  as  the  cement  of  society,  the  head  of  the  family, 
and  the  centre  of  cohesion,  has,  for  all  intents  and  purposes, 
ceased  to  exist.  She  has  become  a  wandering  isolated 
unit,  rather  a  dispersive  than  a  collective  force. 

Already  the  working  of  the  poison  is  apparent  in  our 
system  of  law,  and  it  is  appalling.  The  family  principle 
has  decayed  until,  as  a  legal  conception,  it  has  ceased  to 
exist.  The  father  has  no  authority,  the  wife  is  absolutely 
independent  and  so  are  the  children,  save  so  far  as  the 
state  exerts  a  modified  control,  as  in  the  matter  of  edu- 


120  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

cation.  The  graduated  tax  seeks  to  equalize  the  earning 
power  of  the  individual,  and  the  inheritance  tax  confiscates 
accumulations  to  the  state.  The  advanced  feminist 
claims  for  the  woman  the  right  to  develop  herself  accord- 
ing to  her  own  will.  She  may  decline  to  bear  children, 
or,  if  she  consents,  she  is  to  bear  them  to  whom  she  may 
choose.  Such  conditions,  if  carried  out  logically,  must 
create  chaos.  If  so,  the  state  must  regulate  such  matters, 
and  the  woman  must  be  required  to  serve  the  state  by 
bearing  children  as  the  man  serves  the  state  in  the  army. 
The  state  must  assume  the  education  and  cost  of  children, 
when  so  born,  and  must  subsequently  employ  them  at 
an  average  wage,  all  thus  being  put  on  an  equaUty. 
Such  is  the  manifest  direction  in  which  the  efforts  of  our 
advanced  feminists  tend. 

It  may  be  very  confidently  assumed,  however,  that  such 
efforts  will  only  result  in  the  enslavement  of  the  weaker 
or  the  poorer  class.  The  rich  and  fortunate  usurer  will 
always  enjoy  exemption  from  all  regulations  which  in- 
convenience him,  even  as  they  do  now  throughout  the 
world.  We  have  seen  the  working  of  the  democratic 
system  during  the  recent  war.  The  bankers,  as  a  class, 
stayed  at  home,  and  the  management  of  all  business,  and, 
above  all  the  fiixing  of  prices,  fell  automatically  into  the 
hands  of  those  who  were  the  strongest.    As  John  Quincy 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  HENRY  ADAMS      121 

Adams  discovered  in  1828,  democracy  would  not  permit 
the  ablest  staff  of  officials,  to  be  chosen  by  him,  to  ad- 
minister the  public  trust.  Democracy,  on  the  contrary, 
has  insisted  on  degrading  the  pubUc  service  to  a  common 
level  of  incapacity,  thereby  throwing  the  management 
of  all  difficult  public  problems,  such  as  the  use  of  rail- 
roads and  canals,  into  private  hands,  in  order  that  they 
might  escape  ruin,  and  thence  has  come  the  predicament  in 
which  we,  in  particular,  and  the  world  at  large,  now  stand. 
The  democratic  principle  of  public  conduct  has  always 
been  "that  to  the  victor  belongs  the  spoil,"  and  public 
property  has  been  administered  accordingly.  It  is  the 
system  of  averages  or  of  levelhng  downward.  "We  see 
it  in  the  trade  union.  The  wage  is  fixed  according  to 
the  capacity  of  the  feeblest  workman,  precisely  as  the 
pace  of  the  regiment  is  fixed  by  the  walk  of  the  slowest 
horse.  But  under  nature's  system  of  competition  the 
opposite  tendency  prevails,  and  prevails  to  a  terrible 
excess,  even  to  the  excess  of  war.  And  social  war,  or 
massacre,  would  seem  to  be  the  natural  ending  of  the 
democratic  philosophy.  Viewed  thus,  Henry's  estimate 
of  time  seems  not  to  be  beyond  the  limit  of  probability, 
but  whether  right  or  wrong,  in  point  of  time,  the  ultimate 
conclusion  seems  to  be,  sooner  or  later,  humanly  speaking, 
a  certainty. 


122    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE]  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Lastly,  I  have  one  word  more  touching  that  prof oundest 
of  problems,  —  Is  this  universe  purposeful  or  chaotic, 
particularly  as  viewed  in  the  light  of  astronomy  ? 

Mr.  Adams  always  loved  and  promoted  astronomy, 
for,  as  a  young  man,  he  doubted  not  that  he  saw  therein 
the  working  and  the  purpose  of  the  divine  mind.  As 
he  aged,  doubts  gathered,  and  I  have  quoted  his  diary,  X, 
39,  to  show  whither  his  mind  tended  at  seventy-one.  Had 
he  lived,  he  might  well  have  reached  the  ground  taken 
by  his  grandson  in  ''Phase,"  who  used  the  comet  as  the 
emblem  of  chaos.  (''Phase,"  p.  300,  et  seq.)  But  Mr. 
Adams  always  adored  order  and  loathed  the  very  idea 
of  chaos.  Yet  he  died  for  astronomy,  the  science  of 
chaos.     Such  is  human  effort  and  prescience.^ 

^  If  the  reader  is  interested  in  scientific  chaos,  I  refer  him  to  Simon 
Newcomb's  '  'Astronomy  for  Students, "  Second  Edition,  Chapter  VII, 
Cosmogony,  page  492,  et  seq. 


THE  TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY 
1894 


\ 


THE  TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY » 

Guada'-c-jara.,  December  12,  1894. 

Dear  Sir  :  I  regret  extremely  that  constant  absence 
has  prevented  me  from  attending  the  meetings  of  the 
Historical  Association.  On  the  date  which  your  letter 
mentions  as  that  of  its  first  decennial  I  shall  not  be 
within  reach.  I  have  to  ask  you  to  offer  my  apology  to 
the  members,  and  the  assurance  that  at  that  moment  I 
am  believed  to  be  somewhere  beyond  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama.  Perhaps  this  absence  runs  in  some  of  the 
mysterious  ways  of  nature's  law,  for  you  will  not  forget 
that  when  you  did  me  the  honor  to  make  me  your  president 
I  was  still  farther  away  —  in  Tahiti  or  Fiji,  I  beUeve  — 
and  never  even  had  an  opportunity  to  thank  you.  Evi- 
dently I  am  fitted  only  to  be  an  absent  president,  and 
you  will  pardon  a  defect  which  is  clearly  not  official,  but 
a  condition  of  the  man. 

I  regret  this  fault  the  more  because  I  would  have  liked 
to  be  of  service,  and  perhaps  there  is  service  that  might  be 
usefully  performed.  Even  the  effort  to  hold  together  the 
persons  interested  in  history  is  worth  making.  That  we 
should  ever  act  on  pubUc  opinion  with  the  weight  of  one 
compact  and  one  energetic  conviction  is  hardly  to  be 
expected,  but  that  one  day  or  another  we  shall  be  com- 
pelled to  act  individually  or  in  groups  I  cannot  doubt. 
With  more  anxiety  than  confidence,  I  should  have  Hked 

*  A  communication  to  the  American  Historical  Association,  as 
President  of  the  Association. 

125 


126  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  do  something,  however  trifling,  to  hold  the  association 
together  and  unite  it  on  some  common  ground,  with  a  full 
understanding  of  the  course  which  history  seems  destined 
to  take  and  with  a  good-natured  willingness  to  accept  or 
reject  the  result,  but  in  any  case  not  to  quarrel  over  it. 

No  one  who  has  watched  the  course  of  history  during 
the  last  generation  can  have  felt  doubt  of  its  tendency. 
Those  of  us  who  read  Buckle's  first  volume  when  it 
appeared  in  1857,  and  almost  immediately  afterwards,  in 
1859,  read  the  Origin  of  Species  and  felt  the  violent 
impulse  which  Darwin  ^ave  to  the  study  of  natural  laws, 
never  doubted  that  historians  would  follow  until  they 
had  exhausted  every  possible  hypothesis  to  create  a 
science  of  history.  Year  after  year  passed,  and  little 
progress  has  been  made.  Perhaps  the  mass  of  students 
are  more  skeptical  now  than  they  were  thirty  years  ago  of 
the  possibihty  that  such  a  science  can  be  created.  Yet 
almost  every  successful  historian  has  been  busy  with  it, 
adding  here  a  new  analysis,  a  new  generalization  there; 
a  clear  and  definite  connection  where  before  the  rupture 
of  idea  was  absolute ;  and,  above  all,  extending  the  field 
of  study  until  it  shall  include  all  races,  all  countries, 
and  all  times.  Like  other  branches  of  science,  history  is 
now  encumbered  and  hampered  by  its  own  mass,  but  its 
tendency  is  always  the  same,  and  cannot  be  other  than 
what  it  is.  That  the  effort  to  make  history  a  science 
may  fail  is  possible,  and  perhaps  probable;  but  that  it 
should  cease,  unless  for  reasons  that  would  cause  all 
science  to  cease,  is  not  within  the  range  of  experience. 
Historians  will  not,  and  even  if  they  would  they  can  not, 
abandon  the  attempt.  Science  itself  would  admit  its 
own  failure  if  it  admitted  that  man,  the  most  important 
of  all  its  subjects,  could  not  be  brought  within  its  range. 


THE   TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY  127 

You  may  be  sure  that  four  out  of  five  serious  students  of 
history  who  are  Uving  to-day  have,  in  the  course  of  their 
work,  felt  that  they  stood  on  the  brink  of  a  great  gen- 
eraUzation  that  would  reduce  all  history  under  a  law  as 
clear  as  the  laws  which  govern  the  material  world.  As 
the  great  writers  of  our  time  have  touched  one  by  one  the 
separate  fragments  of  admitted  law  by  which  society 
betrays  its  character  as  a  subject  for  science,  not  one  of 
them  can  have  failed  to  feel  an  instant's  hope  that  he 
might  find  the  secret  which  would  transform  these  odds 
and  ends  of  philosophy  into  one  self-evident,  harmonious, 
and  complete  system.  He  has  seemed  to  have  it,  as  the 
Spanish  say,  in  his  inkstand.  Scores  of  times  he  must 
have  dropped  his  pen  to  think  how  one  short  step,  one 
sudden  inspiration,  would  show  all  human  knowledge; 
how,  in  these  thickset  forests  of  history,  one  corner 
turned,  one  faint  trail  struck,  would  bring  him  on  the 
highroad  of  science.  Every  professor  who  has  tried  to 
teach  the  doubtful  facts  which  we  now  call  history  must 
have  felt  that  sooner  or  later  he  or  another  would  put 
order  in  the  chaos  and  bring  light  into  darkness.  Not  so 
much  genius  or  favor  was  needed  as  patience  and  good 
luck.  The  law  was  certainly  there,  and  as  certainly  was 
in  places  actually  visible,  to  be  touched  and  handled, 
as  though  it  were  a  law  of  chemistry  or  physics.  No 
teacher  with  a  spark  of  imagination  or  with  an  idea  of 
scientific  method  can  have  helped  dreaming  of  the  immor- 
taUty  that  would  be  achieved  by  the  man  who  should 
successfully  apply  Darwin's  method  to  the  facts  of  human 
history. 

Those  of  us  who  have  had  occasion  to  keep  abreast  of 
the  rapid  progress  which  has  been  made  in  history  during 
the  last  fifty  years  must  be  convinced  that  the  same  rate 


128    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  progress  during  another  half  century  would  necessarily 
raise  history  to  the  rank  of  a  science.  Our  only  doubt 
is  whether  the  same  rate  can  possibly  be  maintained. 
If  not,  our  situation  is  simple.  In  that  case,  we  shall 
remain  more  or  less  where  we  are.  But  we  have  reached 
a  point  where  we  ought  to  face  the  possibility  of  a  great 
and  perhaps  a  sudden  change  in  the  importance  of  our 
profession.  We  cannot  help  asking  ourselves  what 
would  happen  if  some  new  Darwin  were  to  demonstrate 
the  laws  of  historical  evolution. 

I  admit  that  the  mere  idea  of  such  an  event  fills  my  mind 
with  anxiety.  When  I  remember  the  astonishing  influence 
exerted  by  a  mere  theorist  like  Rousseau ;  by  a  reasoner 
like  Adam  Smith ;  by  a  philosopher,  beyond  contact  with 
material  interests,  like  Darwin,  I  cannot  imagine  the 
limits  of  the  shock  that  might  follow  the  estabhshment 
of  a  fixed  science  of  history.  Hitherto  our  profession  has 
been  encouraged,  or,  at  all  events,  tolerated  by  govern- 
ments and  by  society  as  an  amusing  or  instructive  and, 
at  any  rate,  a  safe  and  harmless  branch  of  inquiry.  But 
what  will  be  the  attitude  of  government  or  of  society 
toward  any  conceivable  science  of  history?  We  know 
what  followed  Rousseau;  what  industrial  and  political 
struggles  have  resulted  from  the  teachings  of  Adam  Smith ; 
what  a  revolution  and  what  vehement  opposition  has 
been  and  still  is  caused  by  the  ideas  of  Darwin,  Can 
we  imagine  any  science  of  history  that  would  not  be  vastly 
more  violent  in  its  effects  than  the  dissensions  roused  by 
any  one  or  by  all  three  of  these  great  men  ? 

I  ask  myself.  What  shape  can  be  given  to  any  science 
of  history  that  will  not  shake  to  its  foundations  some 
prodigious  interest?  The  world  is  made  up  of  a  few 
immense  forces,  each  with  an  organization  that  corre- 


THE  TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY  129 

sponds  with  its  strength.  The  church  stands  first ;  and 
at  the  outset  we  must  assume  that  the  church  will  not 
and  cannot  accept  any  science  of  history,  because  science, 
by  its  definition,  must  exclude  the  idea  of  a  personal  and 
active  providence.  The  state  stands  next;  and  the 
hostility  of  the  state  would  be  assured  toward  any  system 
or  science  that  might  not  strengthen  its  arm.  Property 
is  growing  more  and  more  timid  and  looks  with  extreme 
jealousy  on  any  new  idea  that  may  weaken  vested  rights. 
Labor  is  growing  more  and  more  self-confident  and  looks 
with  contempt  on  all  theories  that  do  not  support  its 
own.  Yet  we  cannot  conceive  of  a  science  of  history 
that  would  not,  directly  or  indirectly,  affect  all  these 
vast  social  forces. 

Any  science  assumes  a  necessary  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect,  a  force  resulting  in  motion  which  cannot  be  other 
than  what  it  is.  Any  science  of  history  must  be  absolute, 
Uke  other  sciences,  and  must  fix  with  mathematical  cer- 
tainty the  path  which  human  society  has  got  to  follow. 
That  path  can  hardly  lead  toward  the  interests  of  all  the 
great  social  organizations.  We  cannot  conceive  that  it 
should  help  at  the  same  time  the  church  and  the  state, 
property  and  communism,  capital  and  poverty,  science 
and  reUgion,  trade  and  art.  Whatever  may  be  its  orbit, 
it  must,  at  least  for  a  time,  point  away  from  some  of 
these  forces  toward  others  which  are  regarded  as  hostile. 
Conceivably,  it  might  lead  off  in  eccentric  lines  away 
from  them  all,  but  by  no  power  of  our  imagination  can 
we  conceive  that  it  should  lead  toward  them  all. 

Although  I  distrust  my  own  judgment  and  look  earnestly 
for  guidance  to  those  who  are  younger  than  I  and  closer 
to  the  movement  of  the  time,  I  cannot  be  wholly  wrong 
in  thinking  that  a  change  has  come  over  the  tendency  of 


130  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

liberal  thought  since  the  middle  of  the  century.  Darwin 
led  an  intellectual  revival  much  more  hopeful  than  any 
movement  that  can  now  be  seen  in  Europe,  except  among 
the  socialists.  Had  history  been  converted  into  a  science 
at  that  time  it  would  perhaps  have  taken  the  form  of 
cheerful  optimism  which  gave  to  Darwin's  conclusions 
the  charm  of  a  possible  human  perfectibility.  Of  late 
years  the  tone  of  European  thought  has  been  distinctly 
despondent  among  the  classes  which  were  formerly 
most  hopeful.  If  a  science  of  history  were  established 
to-day  on  the  lines  of  its  recent  development  I  greatly  fear 
it  would  take  its  tone  from  the  pessimism  of  Paris,  Berlin, 
London,  and  St.  Petersburg,  unless  it  brought  into 
sight  some  new  and  hitherto  unsuspected  path  for  civiliza-^ 
tion  to  pursue. 

If  it  pointed  to  a  socialistic  triumph  it  would  place  us 
in  an  attitude  of  hostility  toward  existing  institutions. 
Even  supposing  that  our  universities  would  permit  their 
professors  in  this  country  to  announce  the  scientific 
certainty  of  communistic  triumphs,  could  Europe  be 
equally  liberal?  Would  property,  on  which  the  univer- 
sities depend,  allow  such  freedom  of  instruction  ?  Would 
the  state  suffer  its  foundation  to  be  destroyed?  Would 
society  as  now  constituted  tolerate  the  open  assertion 
of  a  necessity  which  should  affirm  its  approaching  over- 
throw ? 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  new  science  required  us  to 
announce  that  the  present  evils  of  the  world  —  its  huge 
armaments,  its  vast  accumulations  of  capital,  its  advancing 
materiahsm,  and  declining  arts  —  were  to  be  continued, 
exaggerated,  over  another  thousand  years,  no  one  would 
listen  to  us  with  satisfaction.  Society  would  shut  its 
eyes  and  ears.     If  we  proved  the  certainty  of  our  results 


THE  TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY  131 

we  should  prove  it  without  a  sympathetic  audience  and 
without  good  efifect.  No  one  except  artists  and  sociahsts 
would  Usten,  and  the  conviction  which  we  should  produce 
on  them  could  lead  only  to  despair  and  attempts  at 
anarchy  in  art,  in  thought,  and  in  society. 

If,  finally,  the  science  should  prove  that  society  must 
at  a  given  time  revert  to  the  church  and  recover  its  old 
foundation  of  absolute  faith  in  a  personal  providence 
and  a  revealed  reUgion,  it  commits  suicide. 

In  whatever  direction  we  look  we  can  see  no  possibiUty 
of  converting  history  into  a  science  without  bringing  it 
into  hostihty  toward  one  or  more  of  the  most  powerful 
organizations  of  the  era.  If  the  world  is  to  continue 
moving  toward  the  point  which  it  has  so  energetically 
pursued  during  the  last  fifty  years,  it  will  destroy  the 
hopes  of  the  vast  organizations  of  labor.  If  it  is  to  change 
its  course  and  become  communistic,  it  places  us  in  direct 
hostiUty  to  the  entire  fabric  of  our  social  and  pohtical 
system.  If  it  goes  on,  we  must  preach  despair.  If  it 
goes  back,  it  must  deny  and  repudiate  science.  If  it 
goes  forward,  round  a  circle  which  leads  through  com- 
munism, we  must  declare  ourselves  hostile  to  the  property 
that  pays  us  and  the  institutions  we  are  bound  in  duty  to 
support. 

A  science  cannot  be  played  with.  If  an  hypothesis  is 
advanced  that  obviously  brings  into  a  direct  sequence  of 
cause  and  effect  all  the  phenomena  of  human  history,  we 
must  accept  it,  and  if  we  accept  we  must  teach  it.  The 
mere  fact  that  it  overthrows  social  organizations  cannot 
affect  our  attitude.  The  rest  of  society  can  reject  or 
ignore,  but  we  must  follow  the  new  light  no  matter  where 
it  leads.  Only  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
the  common  sense  of  mankind,  supported  by  the  authority 


132    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  revealed  religion,  affirmed  the  undoubted  and  self- 
evident  fact  that  the  sun  moved  round  the  earth.  Galileo 
suddenly  asserted  and  proved  that  the  earth  moved  round 
the  sun.  You  know  what  followed,  and  the  famous 
"E  pur  si  muove."  Even  if  we,  Uke  Galileo,  should  be 
obUged  by  the  religious  or  secular  authority  to  recant 
and  repudiate  our  science,  we  should  still  have  to  say  as 
he  did  in  secret  if  not  in  pubhc,  ''E  pur  si  muove." 

Those  of  us  who  have  reached  or  passed  middle  age  need 
not  trouble  ourselves  very  much  about  the  future.  We 
have  seen  one  or  two  great  revolutions  in  thought  and  we 
have  had  enough.  We  are  not  likely  to  accept  any  new 
theory  that  shall  threaten  to  disturb  our  repose.  We 
should  reject  at  once,  and  probably  by  a  large  majority,  a 
hypothetical  science  that  must  obviously  be  incapable  of 
proof.  We  should  take  the  same  attitude  that  our  fathers 
took  toward  the  theories  and  hypotheses  of  Darwin. 
We  may  meantime  reply  to  such  conundrums  by  the 
formula  that  has  smoothed  our  path  in  life  over  many 
disasters  and  cataclysms:  ''Perhaps  the  crisis  will 
never  occur ;  and  even  if  it  does  occur,  we  shall  probably 
be  dead."  To  us  who  have  already  gone  as  far  as  we  set 
out  to  go,  this  answer  is  good  and  sufficient,  but  those 
who  are  to  be  the  professors  and  historians  of  the  future 
have  got  duties  and  responsibilities  of  a  heavier  kind  than 
we  older  ones  ever  have  had  to  carry.  They  cannot  afford 
to  deal  with  such  a  question  in  such  a  spirit.  They  would 
have  to  rejoin  in  Heine's  words : 

Also  fragen  wir  bestandig, 
Bis  man  uns  mit  einer  Handvoll 
Erde  endlich  stopft  die  Mauler, 
Aber  is  das  eine  Ant  wort? 


THE  TENDENCY  OF  HISTORY  133 

They  may  at  any  time  in  the  next  fifty  years  be 
compelled  to  find  an  answer,  ''Yes"  or  "No,"  under 
the  pressure  of  the  most  powerful  organizations  the  world 
has  ever  known  for  the  suppression  of  influences  hostile 
to  its  safety.  If  this  association  should  be  gifted  with 
the  length  of  life  that  we  all  wish  for  it,  a  span  of  a  century 
at  least,  it  can  hardly  fail  to  be  torn  by  some  such  dilemma. 
Our  universities,  at  all  events,  must  be  prepared  to  meet  it. 
If  such  a  crisis  should  come,  the  universities  throughout 
the  world  will  have  done  most  to  create  it,  and  are  under 
most  obligation  to  find  a  solution  for  it.  I  will  not  deny 
that  the  shadow  of  this  coming  event  has  cast  itself  on  me, 
both  as  a  teacher  and  a  writer ;  or  that,  in  the  last  ten 
years,  it  has  often  kept  me  silent  where  I  should  once 
have  spoken  with  confidence,  or  has  caused  me  to  think 
long  and  anxiously  before  expressing  in  public  any  opinion 
at  all.  Beyond  a  doubt,  silence  is  best.  In  these  remarks, 
which  are  only  casual  and  offered  in  the  paradoxical  spirit 
of  private  conversation,  I  have  not  ventured  to  express 
any  opinion  of  my  own ;  or,  if  I  have  expressed  it,  pray 
consider  it  as  withdrawn.  The  situation  seems  to  call  for 
no  opinion,  unless  we  have  some  scientific  theory  to  offer ; 
but  to  me  it  seems  so  interesting  that,  in  taking  leave  of 
the  association,  I  feel  inclined  to  invite  them,  as  in- 
dividuals, to  consider  the  matter  in  a  spirit  that  will 
enable  us,  should  the  crisis  arise,  to  deal  with  it  in  a 
kindly  temper,  and  a  full  understanding  of  its  serious 
dangers  and  responsibilities. 
Ever  truly  yours, 

Henry  Adams. 

Herbert  B.  Adams,  Esq., 

Secretary,  etc.,  American  Historical  Association. 


A  LETTER  TO  AMERICAN  TEACHERS  OF 
HISTORY 

1910 


A  LETTER  TO  AMERICAN  TEACHERS  OF 
HISTORY 

1603  H  Street, 
Washington,  D.  C. 
Dear  Sir: 

Availing  myself  of  the  privilege  commonly  granted,  in 
the  hberal  professions,  to  age  and  seniority,  I  use  the 
freedom  of  an  old  colleague  in  offering  this  small  volume 
for  your  acceptance. 

Some  fifteen  years  ago,  on  retiring  from  the  Presidency 
of  the  Historical  Association,  I  made  a  short  address  on 
the  relations  of  the  Historical  Department  to  society; 
and,  had  such  a  custom  existed,  I  should  have  gladly 
enlarged  the  paper  to  the  dimensions  of  a  Report.  The 
volume  now  sent  you,  is,  in  effect,  such  a  Report,  un- 
official and  personal. 

Touching,  as  it  does,  some  of  the  most  delicate  relations 
of  University  Instruction  in  rival  departments,  the  book 
has  too  much  the  air  of  provoking  controversy.  I  do 
not  know  that  controversy  would  do  harm,  but  I  see 
nothing  to  be  gained  by  provoking  it.  For  the  moment, 
the  problem  is  chiefly  one  of  technical  instruction;  of 
grouping  departments;  at  most,  of  hierarchy  in  the 
sciences.  Some  day,  it  may  become  a  question  whether 
one  department,  or  another,  is  to  impose  on  the  Uni- 
versity a  final  law  of  instruction;  but,  for  the  present, 
it  is  a  domestic  matter,  to  be  settled  at  home  before  in- 
viting the  world  to  interfere.     Therefore,  the  volume  will 

137 


138     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMi^ 

^ot  be  published,  or  offered  for  sale,  or  sent  to  the  press 
for  notice. 

For  the  same  reason,  the  volume  needs  no  acknowledg- 
ment. Unless  the  questions  which  it  raises  or  suggests 
seem  to  you  so  personal  as  to  need  action,  you  have 
probably  no  other  personal  interest  than  that  of  avoiding 
the  discussion  altogether.  Few  of  us  are  required  to 
look  ten,  or  twenty  years,  or  a  whole  generation  ahead, 
in  order  to  realize  what  will  then  be  the  relation  of  history 
to  physics  or  physiology,  and  even  if  we  make  the  attempt, 
we  are  met  at  the  outset  by  the  difficulty  of  allowing  for 
our  personal  error,  which  is,  in  so  dehcate  a  calculation, 
an  element  of  the  first  importance.  Commonly,  our 
personal  error  takes  the  form  of  inertia,  and  is  more  or 
less  constant  and  calculable.  For  myself,  the  preference 
for  movement  of  inertia  is  decided.  The  risk  of  error  in 
changing  a  long-established  course  seems  always  greater 
to  me  than  the  chance  of  correction,  unless  the  elements 
are  known  more  exactly  than  is  possible  in  human  affairs ; 
but  the  need  of  determining  these  elements  is  all  the 
greater  on  that  account ;  and  this  volume  is  only  a  first 
experiment  towards  calculating  their  past,  present  and 
future  values. 

Mathematicians  assume  the  right  to  choose,  within  the 
limits  of  logical  contradiction,  what  path  they  please  in 
reaching  their  results,  provided  that  when  they  come  to 
the  end  of  their  process,  they  consent  to  test  their  result 
by  the  facts  of  experience.  More  than  this  cannot  fairly 
be  asked  of  historians. 

If  I  call  this  volume  a  letter,  it  is  only  because  that 
Uterary  form  affects  to  be  more  colloquial  or  more  fa- 
miliar than  the  usual  scientific  treatise ;  but  such  letters 
never  require  a  response,  even  when  they  invite  one; 


A  LETTER  TO  AMERICAN  TEACHERS  OF  HISTORY     139 

and  in  the  present  case,  the  subject  of  the  letter  involves 
a  problem  which  will  certainly  exceed  the  limits  of  a  life 
already  far  advanced,  so  that  its  solution,  if  a  solution  is 
possible,  will  have  to  be  reached  by  a  new  generation. 
16  February,  1910. 


/ 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Problem 

THE  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe  governed 
physical  science  for  three  hundred  years.  Directly 
succeeding  the  theological  scheme  of  a  universe  existing 
as  a  unity  by  the  will  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  Creator, 
it  affirmed  or  assumed  the  unity  and  indestructibility  of 
Force  or  Energy,  as  a  scientific  dogma  or  Law,  which 
was  called  the  Law  of  the  Conservation  of  Energy. 
Under  this  Law  the  quantity  of  matter  in  the  universe 
remained  invariable;  the  sum  of  movement  remained 
constant;  energy  was  indestructible;  "nothing  was 
added ;  nothing  was  lost ;  "  nothing  was  created,  nothing 
was  destroyed. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  —  that 
is,  about  1850,  —  a  new  school  of  physicists  appeared 
in  Europe,  dating  from  an  Essay  on  the  Motive  Power 
of  Heat,  published  by  Sadi  Carnot  in  1824,  and  made 
famous  by  the  names  of  Wilham  Thomson,  Lord  Kelvin, 
in  England,  and  of  Clausius  and  Helmholz  in  Germany, 
who  announced  a  second  law  of  dynamics.    The  first 

140 


THE  PROBLEM  141 

law  said  that  Energy  was  never  lost;  the  second  said 
that  it  was  never  saved ;  that,  while  the  sum  of  energy 
in  the  universe  might  remain  constant,  —  granting  that 
the  universe  was  a  closed  box  from  which  nothing  could 
escape,  —  the  higher  powers  of  energy  tended  always  to 
fall  lower,  and  that  this  process  had  no  known  limit. 

The  second  law  was  briefly  stated  by  Thomson  in  a 
paper  ''On  a  Universal  Tendency  in  Nature  to  the  Dissi- 
pation of  Mechanical  Energy,"  published  in  October, 
1852,  which  is  now  as  classic  as  Kepler's  or  Newton's 
Laws,  and  quite  as  necessary  to  a  scientific  education. 
Quoted  exactly  from  Thomson's  "Mathematical  and 
Physical  Papers"  (Cambridge,  1882,  Vol.  I,  p.  514),  the 
Law  of  Dissipation  runs  thus :  — 

"1.  There  is  at  present  in  the  material  world  a  universal 
tendency  to  the  dissipation  of  mechanical  energy. 

"2.  Any  restoration  of  mechanical  energy,  without 
more  than  an  equivalent  of  dissipation,  is  impossible  in 
inanimate  material  processes,  and  is  probably  never 
effected  by  means  of  organized  matter,  either  endowed 
with  vegetable  life  or  subjected  to  the  will  of  an  animated 
creature. 

"3.  Within  a  finite  period  of  time  past,  the  earth  must 
have  been,  and  within  a  finite  period  of  time  to  come,  the 
earth  must  again  be,  unfit  for  the  habitation  of  man  as 


142     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

at  present  constituted,  unless  operations  have  been,  or 
are  to  be  performed,  which  are  impossible  under  the  laws 
to  which  the  known  operations  going  on  at  present  in  the 
material  world,  are  subject." 

When  this  young  man  of  twenty-eight  thus  tossed  the 
universe  into  the  ash-heap,  few  scientific  authorities 
took  him  seriously;  but  after  the  first  gasp  of  surprise 
physicists  began  to  give  him  qualified  support  which  soon 
became  absolute.  ''This  conclusion  made  much  noise," 
says  Ostwald  C'L'Energie,"  Paris,  1910) ;  ''the  more  be- 
cause Helmholz  and  Clausius  gave  in  their  adherence  to 
it.  We  owe  to  the  latter  the  following  formula :  '  The 
Entropy  of  the  Universe  tends  toward  a  maximum.'" 
To  physicists,  this  law  of  Entropy  became  "  a  prodigiously 
abstract  conception,"  according  to  the  famihar  phrase 
of  M.  Poincare ;  but  to  the  vulgar  and  ignorant  historian 
it  meant  only  that  the  ash-heap  was  constantly  increas- 
ing in  size ;  while  the  public  understood  little  and  cared 
less  about  Entropy,  and  the  literary  class  knew  only  that 
the  Newtonian  universe,  in  which  they  had  been  cradled, 
admitted  no  loss  of  energy  in  the  solar  system,  where  the 
planets,  at  the  end  of  their  planetary  years,  returned 
exactly  to  their  positions  at  the  beginning.  Gravitation 
showed  no  waste  of  energy  whatever,  except  where  friction 
occurred,  but  had  planets  gone  off  like  comets,  and  never 


THE  PROBLEM  143 

returned,  the  scholar  of  1860  would  still  have  feared  to 
question  the  scientific  dogma  which  asserted  resolutely, 
without  qualification,  the  fact  that  nothing  in  nature  was 
lost.  If  no  other  assurance  had  satisfied  him,  all  doubts 
were  silenced  by  the  famous  outburst  of  eloquence  with 
which  Tyndall  concluded  his  Lectures  in  1862,  on  "Heat 
as  a  Mode  of  Motion."  Old  men  can  still  recall  how, 
after  explaining  that  "the  quantity  of  the  solar  heat  inter- 
cepted by  the  earth  is  only  ^.aoo.o'oo.ooo  ^^  *^®  *^*^^ 
radiation,"  Tyndall  refrained  from  telHng  what  became 
of  the  heat  not  intercepted  by  the  earth,  and  went  on  to 
expatiate  with  enthusiasm  on  the  imity  of  the  universe 
and  its  energy :  — 

"Look  at  the  integrated  energies  of  our  world,  — the 
stored  power  of  our  coalfields ;  —  our  winds  and  rivers ;  — 
our  fleets,  armies  and  guns !  What  are  they  ?  They  are 
all  generated  by  a  portion  of  the  sun's  energy  which  does 
not  amount  to  o  ^«»  Ln «««  o^  the  whole.  This,  in  fact, 
is  the  entire  fraction  of  the  sun's  force  intercepted  by 
the  earth,  and  in  reality  we  convert  but  a  small  fraction 
of  this  fraction  into  mechanical  energy.  Multiplying  all 
our  powers  by  milUons  of  millions,  we  do  not  reach  the 
sun's  expenditure.  And,  still,  notwithstanding  this  enor- 
mous drain,  in  the  lapse  of  human  history  we  are  unable 
to  detect  a  diminution  of  his  store.    Measured  by  our 


144  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

largest  terrestrial  standards,  such  a  reservoir  of  power 
is  infinite;  but  it  is  our  privilege  to  rise  above  these 
standards,  and  to  regard  the  sun  himself  as  a  speck  in 
infinite  extension,  —  a  mere  drop  in  the  universal  sea. 
We  analyse  the  space  in  which  he  is  immersed,  and  which 
is  the  vehicle  of  his  power.  We  pass  to  other  systems 
and  other  suns,  each  pouring  forth  energy  Hke  our  own, 
but  still  without  infringement  of  the  law  which  reveals 
immutabihty  in  the  midst  of  change,  which  recognises 
incessant  transference  and  conversion,  but  neither  final 
gain  nor  loss.  This  law  generalises  the  aphorism  of 
Solomon,  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  by 
teaching  us  to  detect  everywhere,  under  its  infinite  variety 
of  appearances,  the  same  primeval  force.  To  nature 
nothing  can  be  added ;  from  nature  nothing  can  be  taken 
away ;  the  sum  of  her  energies  is  constant,  and  the  utmost 
man  can  do  in  the  pursuit  of  physical  truth,  or  in  the 
apphcation  of  physical  knowledge,  is  to  shift  the  con- 
stituents of  the  never-varjdng  total,  and  out  of  one  of 
them  to  form  another.  The  law  of  conservation  rigidly 
excludes  both  creation  and  annihilation.  Waves  may 
change  to  ripples  and  ripples  to  waves,  —  magnitude 
may  be  substituted  for  number,  and  number  for  magni- 
tude, —  asteroids  may  aggregate  to  suns,  suns  may  re- 
solve themselves  into  florae  and  faunse,  and  florae  and 


THE  PROBLEM  145 

faunae  melt  in  air,  —  the  flux  of  power  is  eternally  the 
same.  It  rolls  in  music  through  the  ages,  and  all  ter- 
restrial energy,  —  the  manifestations  of  hf e  as  well  as 
the  display  of  phenomena,  are  but  the  modulations  of 
its  rhythm." 

This  magisterial  tone  irritated  some  of  the  new  physicists 
to  the  point  of  hinting  that  Tyndall  dehberately  mis- 
stated the  facts  of  physics,  for  fear  lest  some  one  should 
drive  him  into  a  logical  snare,  ending  in  the  necessity  of 
admitting  a  Creation.  In  flat  contradiction  to  Tyndall, 
Kelvin  and  Tait  affirmed  that  "the  same  primeval  force" 
could  never  be  detected,  —  much  less  recovered ;  that 
all  nature's  energies  were  slowly  converting  themselves 
into  heat  and  vanishing  in  space,  until,  at  the  last,  noth- 
ing would  be  left  except  a  dead  ocean  of  energy  at  its 
lowest  possible  level,  —  say  of  heat  at  1°  Centigrade,  or 
—  272°  C.  below  freezing  point  of  water,  —  and  incapable 
of  doing  any  work  whatever,  since  work  could  be  done 
only  by  a  fall  of  tension,  as  water  does  work  in  falling  to 
sea-level. 

Between  such  authorities  the  unscientific  student  could 
not  interfere.  Naturally,  all  his  sympathies  were  with 
Tyndall.  The  idea  that  the  entire  sidereal  universe  could 
have  gone  on  for  eternity  dissipating  energy,  and  never 
restoring  it,  seemed,  at  the  least,  unreasonable;    while 


146    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  astronomers  drew  up  lists  of  nebulae  by  hundreds 
in  the  very  act  of  generating  universes,  and  the  geologists 
showered  the  theory  with  rocks  in  order  to  show  that  the 
sun  had  aheady  reached  an  age  many  times  greater  than 
Thomson  was  wilUng  to  allow  it. 

No  one  knew,  although  every  one  explained  what  had 
caused  the  inequalities  of  energy;  least  of  all  could  the 
historian  of  human  society  assert  or  deny  that  energy 
could  be  created  or  could  not  be  destroyed.  The  subject 
was  beyond  his  province.  Since  the  Church  had  lost 
its  authority,  the  historian's  field  had  shnmk  into  narrow 
limits  of  rigorously  human  action;  but,  strictly  within 
those  Kmits,  he  was  clear  that  the  energy  with  which 
history  had  to  deal  could  not  be  reduced  directly  to  a 
mechanical  or  physico-chemical  process.  He  was  therefore 
obliged  either  to  deny  that  social  energy  was  an  energy 
at  all;  or  to  assert  that  it  was  an  energy  independent 
of  physical  laws.  Yet  how  could  he  deny  that  social 
energy  was  a  true  form  of  energy  when  he  had  no  reason 
for  existence,  as  professor,  except  to  describe  and  discuss 
its  acts  ?  He  could  neither  doubt  nor  dispute  its  existence 
without  putting  an  end  to  his  own;  and  therefore  he 
was  of  necessity  a  Vitahst,  or  adherent  of  the  doctrine 
that  Vital  Energy  was  independent  of  mechanical  law. 
Vitahsts  are  of  many  kinds. 


THE  PROBLEM  147 

"In  former  times  a  special  force  was  adduced,  —  the 
force  of  life.  More  recently  when  many  phenomena  of 
plant  life  had  been  successfully  reduced  to  simple  chemical 
and  mechanical  processes,  this  vital  force  was  derided 
and  effaced  from  the  Ust  of  natural  agencies.  But  by 
what  name  shall  we  now  designate  that  force  in  nature 
which  is  Uable  to  perish  while  the  protoplasm  suffers  no 
physical  alteration?  .  .  .  This  force  in  nature  is  not 
electricity  or  magnetism;  it  is  not  identical  with  any 
other  natural  force,  for  it  manifests  a  series  of  character- 
istic effects  which  differ  from  all  other  forms  of  energy. 
Therefore  I  do  not  hesitate  again  to  designate  as  'vital 
force'  this  natm-al  agency,  not  to  be  identified  with  any 
other,  whose  immediate  instrument  is  the  protoplasm, 
and  whose  peculiar  effects  we  call  life.  The  atoms  and 
molecules  of  protoplasm  only  fulfil  the  functions  which 
constitute  Ufe  so  long  as  tliey  are  swayed  by  this  vital 
force."  Anton  Keener,  ''The  Natural  History  of  Plants." 

Students  who  are  curious  on  the  subject  can  consult 
the  "Vitalismus  als  Geschichte  und  als  Lehre,"  by  Dr. 
Hans  Driesch  (Leipzig,  1905) ;  but  they  will  understand 
it  little  better  afterwards  than  before.  For  human  his- 
tory the  essential  was  to  convince  itself  that  social  energy, 
though  a  true  energy,  was  governed  by  laws  of  its  own. 

To  the  generation  of  Lord  Macaulay  and  George  Ban- 


148    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

croft,  the  problem  seemed  scarcely  serious.  They  could 
ignore  the  dispute,  since  Thomson  agreed  with  Tyndall 
so  far  as  to  admit  that,  for  human  purposes,  the  Dissipa- 
tion of  Solar  Energy  was  so  slow  as  to  be  indistinguishable 
from  Conservation  of  Energy.  The  historian  never  even 
took  the  trouble  to  inform  himself  of  the  bearings  of  the 
problem.  Indeed  at  that  time,  the  Universities  showed 
a  nervous  unwilHngness  to  teach  philosophy  at  all,  and 
were  especially  averse  to  all  philosophies  of  history, 
whether  inspired  by  Hegel  or  by  Comte,  by  Buckle  or 
by  Karl  Marx.  The  law  that  history  was  not  a  science, 
and  that  society  was  not  an  organism,  calmed  all  serious 
effort;  and  historians  turned  to  the  collection  of  facts, 
as  the  geologists  turned  to  the  collection  of  fossils.  For 
them  it  was  a  happy  period,  and  Uterature  profited  by  it. 

In  fact,  the  problem  was  by  no  means  simple,  and  the 
historian  might  have  made  himself  a  very  competent 
professor  of  Physics  without  the  smallest  profit  to  history. 
Kelvin's  law  asserted  the  constant  dissipation  of  energy, 
but  the  process  was  far  more  complex  than  appeared  in 
this  statement.  Energy  had  a  way  of  coming  and  going 
in  phases  of  intensity  much  more  mysterious  than  the 
energy  itself.  Catastrophe  was  its  law.  The  sun,  ac- 
cording to  Tyndall,  wasted  into  space  practically  all  its 
energy  except  an  imperceptible  portion  that  happened  to 


THE  PROBLEM  149 

fall  on  the  earth ;  but  even  this  portion  was  not  utilizable, 
for  human  purposes,  to  boil  a  pint  of  water,  at  sea-level, 
without  assistance.  Ice,  water,  and  vapor  were  phases 
sharply  distinct.  So  the  imperceptible  portion  of  solar 
energy  which  fell  on  the  earth,  reappeared  by  some  mys- 
terious process,  to  an  infinitely  minute  measure,  in  the 
singular  form  of  intensity  known  as  Vital  Energy,  and 
disappeared  by  a  sudden  and  violent  change  of  phase 
known  as  death.  Man  had  always  flattered  himself  that 
he  knew  —  or  was  about  to  know  —  something  that  would 
make  his  own  energy  intelUgible  to  itself,  but  he  invariably 
found,  on  further  inquiry,  that  the  more  he  knew,  the 
less  he  understood.  Vital  energy  was,  perhaps,  an  in- 
tensity ;  —  so,  at  least,  he  vaguely  hoped ;  —  he  knew 
nothing  at  all ! 

No  one  knew  anything ;  and  yet  the  analogy  between 
Heat  and  Vital  Energy,  suggested  by  Thomson  in  his 
Law  of  Dissipation,  —  and  received  by  the  public  with 
sleepy  indifference,  —  was  insisted  upon  by  the  physicists 
in  accents  that  became  sharper  with  every  generation, 
until  it  began  to  pass  the  bounds  of  scientific  restraint. 
Abeady  in  1884,  Faye,  in  his  "Origin  of  the  World," 
fairly  threatened  mankind  with  its  doom :  — 

"We  must  therefore  renounce  those  brilUant  fancies 
by  which  we  try  to  deceive  ourselves  in  order  to  endow 


150    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

man  with  unlimited  posterity,  and  to  regard  the  universe 
as  the  immense  theatre  on  which  is  to  be  developed  a 
spontaneous  progress  without  end.  On  the  contrary, 
life  must  disappear,  and  the  grandest  material  works  of 
the  human  race  will  have  to  be  effaced  by  degrees  under 
the  action  of  a  few  physical  forces  which  will  survive  man 
for  a  time.  Nothing  will  remain:  —  'etiam  periere 
ruinos!'" 

Thus,  it  seemed,  that  whatever  the  universities  thought 
or  taught,  the  physicists  regarded  society  as  an  organism 
in  the  only  respect  which  seriously  concerned  historians :  — 
It  would  die !  If  Ufe  was  to  disappear,  the  form  of  Vital 
Energy  known  as  Social  Energy,  must  also,  presumably, 
go  to  increase  the  Entropy  of  the  Universe,  thus  proving 
—  at  least  to  the  degree  necessary  and  sufficient  to  pro- 
duce conviction  in  historians,  —  that  History  was  a 
Science.  Although  Faye  settled  this  point,  as  a  matter 
of  thermodynamics,  as  early  as  1884,  his  successors  in 
authority  have  gone  on  repeating  it  with  increasing  energy 
of  expression  ever  since.  To  these  outbursts  of  prophecy 
the  story  will  have  to  recur,  but  for  the  moment,  the  only 
point  requiring  insistence  is  that  sixty  years  of  progress 
in  science  have  only  intensified  the  assertion  that  Vital 
Energy  obeys  the  law  of  thermal  energy.  The  sketch 
of  Kelvin's  Life  and  Work  by  Professor  Andrew  Gray,  — 


THE  PROBLEM  161 

Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  University  of 
Glasgow,  —  published  in  1908,  renews  the  warning  in 
almost  angry  terms.  Once  more  he  asserts,  as  an  axiom 
of  physics,  that  all  work  is  done  by  conversion  of  one 
energy,  or  intensity,  into  another,  and  a  lower:  —  "If 
this  conversion  is  prevented,  all  processes  which  involve 
such  conversion  must  cease,  and  among  these  are  vital 
processes.  ...  It  will  be  the  height  of  imprudence  to 
trust  to  the  prospect,  not  infrequently  referred  to,  at  the 
present  time,  of  drawing  on  the  energy  locked  up  in  the 
atomic  structure  of  matter.  .  .  .  After  a  large  part  of 
the  whole  existent  energy  has  gone  to  raise  the  dead  level 
of  things,  no  difference  of  temperature,  adequate  to  work 
between,  will  be  possible,  and  the  inevitable  death  of  all 
things  will  approach  with  headlong  rapidity." 

This  may  serve  to  represent  the  very  last  opinion  of 
physicists.  The  latest  expression  of  metaphysics,  —  for 
the  present  purpose,  —  shall  be  taken  from  the  notes 
added  by  Eduard  von  Hartmann  to  the  last  edition  of 
his  works,  dated  in  1904 :  — 

*'If  the  social  consciousness  of  to-day  rebels  so  strongly 
against  the  thought  that  vital  processes  will  come  to  an 
end  in  the  world,  the  chief  reason  is  because  society  has 
indeed  absorbed  the  first  principle  of  thermodynamics,  — 
the  conservation  of  energy,  —  but  not  the  second,  the 


152    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

progressive  degradation  of  energy  by  dissipation  and 
levelling  of  intensities;  and,  in  consequence,  has  erro- 
neously interpreted  the  first  law  as  though  it  contained 
an  eternal  guaranty  of  the  endlessness  of  vital  pro- 
cesses. ...  In  reaUty,  the  only  question  is  whether,  in 
the  actual  result,  the  world-process  will  work  itself  out 
slowly  in  prodigious  lapse  of  time,  according  to  purely 
physical  laws;  or  whether  it  will  find  its  end  by  means 
of  some  metaphysical  resource  when  it  has  reached  its 
culminating  point.  Only  in  the  last  case  would  its  end 
coincide  with  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose  or  object;  in 
the  first  case,  a  long  period  of  purposeless  existence  would 
follow  after  the  culmination  of  life."  (Ausgewahlte 
Werke,  viii,  pp.  572-573.     Leipzig,  1904.) 

Thomson's  famous  paper  on  "A  Universal  Tendency  in 
Nature  to  the  Dissipation  of  Energy"  was  pubUshed  in 
1852.  Seven  years  afterwards,  Charles  Darwin  an- 
nounced his  law  of  Evolution,  which  involved  a  contra- 
diction, —  as  von  Hartmann  implies,  —  to  both  the  laws 
of  thermodynamics.  Thomson,  physicist  and  mathe- 
matician, had  thought  only  of  providing  the  energy 
necessary  to  move  his  world ;  Darwin,  neither  physicist 
nor  mathematician,  took  the  necessary  energy  as  given. 
Possibly,  if  he  thought  about  it  at  all,  he  assumed  the 
Law  of  Conservation  as  the  mechanical  equivalent  of 


THE  PROBLEM  153 

Lyell's  Law  of  Uniformity;  but  he  seemed  scrupulously 
careful  to  avoid  asserting  either  principle.  On  his  own 
account  he  never  conmiitted  himself  to  the  doctrine  that, 
within  the  geological  record,  organization  had  largely 
advanced,  or  risen  to  higher  powers,  but  he  did  assert, 
and  permitted  his  followers  to  assert  much  more  broadly 
that  "the  inhabitants  of  the  world,  at  each  successive 
period  in  its  history,  have  beaten  their  predecessors  in 
the  race  for  life,  and  are,  in  so  far,  higher  in  the  scale" ; 
meaning  probably  that  they  were  better  fitted  to  their 
conditions,  but  conveying  the  idea  that  their  vital  powers 
had  risen  from  lower  to  higher  by  the  spontaneous  struggle 
of  the  organism  for  life.  This  popular  understanding  of 
Darwinism  had  httle  to  do  with  Darwin,  whose  great 
service,  —  in  the  field  of  history,  —  consisted  by  no  means 
in  his  personal  theories  either  of  natural  selection,  or  of 
adaptation,  or  of  uniform  evolution;  which  might  be 
all  abandoned  without  affecting  his  credit  for  bringing 
all  vital  processes  under  the  law  of  development  or  evolu- 
tion, —  whether  upward  or  downward  being  immaterial 
to  the  principle  that  all  history  must  be  studied  as  a 
science. 

Society  naturally  and  instinctively  adopted  the  view 
that  Evolution  must  be  upward ;  and  Haeckel  performed 
the  feat  of  measuring  the  height  of  each  step  from  protozoa 


154    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

up  to  man ;  but  still  without  further  attempt  to  account 
for  the  source  or  the  nature  of  the  numerous  energies 
imphed  in  the  process  of  elevation.  Apparently  he  felt 
no  need  of  invoking  any  energy  beyond  that  of  uniform 
solar  heat,  and  took  for  granted  the  power  of  all  organisms 
to  rise  in  potential  by  its  absorption. 

Thus,  at  the  same  moment,  three  contradictory  laws 
of  energy  were  in  force,  all  equally  useful  to  science :  — 
1.  The  Law  of  Conservation,  that  nothing  could  be  added, 
and  nothing  lost,  in  the  sum  of  energy.  2.  The  Law  of 
Dissipation,  that  nothing  could  be  added,  but  that  In- 
tensity must  always  be  lost.  3.  The  Law  of  Evolution, 
that  Vital  Energy  could  be  added,  and  raised  indefinitely 
in  potential,  without  the  smallest  apparent  compensa- 
tion. 

Although  the  physicists  are  far  from  clear  in  defin- 
ing the  term  Vital  Energy,  and  are  exceedingly  timid  in 
treating  of  Social  Energy,  they  are  positive  that  the 
law  of  Entropy  appHes  to  all  vital  processes  even  more 
rigidly  than  to  mechanical.  ''Thus  it  is,"  says  Ostwald 
C'L'Energie,"  Paris,  1910,  p.  116),  "that  animated  be- 
ings always  grow  old,  and  never  young."  As  the  point 
is  pivotal  for  evolution,  it  must  be  understood  as  admitted 
in  the  Law  of  Degradation.  One  of  the  latest  authorities, 
M.  Dastre,  professor  of  physics  at  the  Sorbonne,  in  his 


THE  PROBLEM  155 

volume  called  "La  Vie  et  la  Mort"  (Paris,  1902),  lays 
down  the  dogma  in  one  line:  —  "Vital  Energy  ends  as 
its  last  term,  in  thermal  Energy."  He  admits  that  this 
rule  is  too  absolute ;  it  has  exceptions ;  but  the  exceptions 
are  not  serious :  — 

"The  cycle  of  energy  ends  occasionally  in  mechanical 
energy  (movement),  and  in  some  smaller  degree,  in  other 
energies,  as  for  example,  in  the  electric  energy  produced 
by  nervous  action  and  the  muscles  in  all  animals ;  or  in 
functions  of  special  organs,  as  in  the  rays,  torpedoes,  and 
thunder-fish ;  or  finally  in  the  luminous  energy  of  phos- 
phorescent animals;  but  these  are  secondary  matters." 
The  essential  is  that  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics 
rules  biology  with  an  authority  fully  as  despotic  as  it 
asserts  in  physics.  "If  chemical  energy  is  the  generative 
maternal  form  of  the  vital  energies,  calorific  energy  is 
the  form  of  waste  (d^chet),  of  excrement ;  the  form  which 
is  degraded,  according  to  the  expression  of  the  phys- 
icists. ...  In  the  animal  organism,  heat  is  transformed 
into  nothing:  it  is  dissipated"  (p.  109).  "The  animal 
world  expends  the  energy  which  the  vegetable  world  has 
accimiulated."  The  vegetable  world  draws  its  energy 
from  the  sun,  and  "the  animals  end  by  restoring  it,  in 
the  form  of  dissipated  heat,  to  the  cosmic  space." 

This  teaching  is  expHcit.    Animal  energies  accent  and 


156  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

emphasize  the  law  of  physics  that  nature,  always  and 
everywhere,  tends  to  an  equiUbrium  by  levelUng  its  in- 
tensities. Mechanical  energies  admit  apparent  excep- 
tions, Uke  gravitation,  but  animal  energies  admit  none. 
All  grow  old  and  die.  This  is  the  teaching  of  physics, 
and  although  most  physicists  show  caution  in  defining 
exactly  what  they  mean  by  vital  energy,  the  law,  as  they 
announce  it,  is  relentless.  For  human  purposes,  what- 
ever does  work  is  a  form  of  energy,  and  since  historians 
exist  only  to  recount  and  sum  up  the  work  that  society 
has  done,  either  as  State,  or  as  Church,  as  civil  or  as 
mihtary,  as  intellectual  or  physical,  organisms,  they 
will,  if  they  obey  the  physical  law,  hold  that  society  does 
work  by  degrading  its  energies.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  historian  follows  Haeckel  and  the  evolutionists, 
he  should  hold  that  vital  energy,  by  raising  itself  to  higher 
potentials,  without  apparent  compensation,  has  accom- 
plished its  work  in  defiance  of  both  the  laws  of  thermo- 
dynamics. 

Down  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  nothing 
greatly  mattered,  since  the  actual  forces  could  be  fairly 
well  calculated  or  accounted  for  on  either  principle,  but 
schools  of  apphed  mechanics  are  apt  to  get  into  trouble  by 
using  contradictory  methods.  One  process  or  the  other 
acquires  an  advantage.    The  weaker  submits,  but  in 


THE  PROBLEM  167 

this  instance,  the  difficulty  of  naming  the  weaker  was 
extreme.  That  the  Evolutionist  should  surrender  his 
conquests  seemed  quite  unlikely,  since  he  felt  behind 
him  the  whole  momentum  of  popular  success  and  sym- 
pathy, and  stood  as  heir-apparent  to  all  the  aspirations 
of  mankind.  About  him  were  arranged  in  battalions, 
like  an  army,  the  energies  of  government,  of  society,  of 
democracy,  of  sociaUsm,  of  nearly  all  hterature  and  art, 
as  well  as  hope,  and  whatever  was  left  of  instinct,  —  all 
striving  to  illustrate  not  the  Descent  but  the  Ascent  of 
Man.  The  hostis  humani  generis,  the  outlaw  and  enemy, 
was  the  Degradationist,  who  could  have  no  friends,  be- 
cause he  proclaimed  the  steady  and  fated  enfeeblement 
and  extinction  of  all  nature's  energies ;  but  that  he  should 
abandon  his  laws  seemed  a  still  more  preposterous  idea. 
Never  had  he  asserted  them  so  aggressively,  or  with  such 
dogmatic  authority.  He  held  undisputed  possession  of 
every  technical  school  in  the  world,  and  even  the  primary 
schools  were  largely  under  his  control.  His  second  law 
of  thermodynamics  held  its  place  in  every  text-book  of 
science.  The  Universities  and  higher  branches  of  edu- 
cation were  greatly,  if  not  wholly,  controlled  by  his 
methods.  The  field  of  mathematics  had  become  his. 
He  had  no  serious  intellectual  rival.  Few  things  are 
more  difficult  than  to  judge  how  far  a  society  is  looking 


158    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

one  way  and  working  in  another,  for  the  points  are  shifting 
and  the  rate  of  speed  is  uncertain.  The  acceleration  of 
movement  seems  rapid,  but  the  inertia,  or  resistance  to 
deflection,  may  increase  with  the  rapidity,  so  that  society 
might  pass  through  phase  after  phase  of  speed,  Hke  a 
comet,  without  noting  deflection  in  its  thought.  If  a 
simpler  figure  is  needed,  society  may  be  Hkened  to  an 
island  surrounded  by  a  rising  ocean  which  silently  floods 
its  defences.  One  after  another  the  defences  have  been 
abandoned,  and  society  has  climbed  to  higher  ground  sup- 
'  posed  to  be  out  of  danger.  So  the  classic  Gods  were 
abandoned  for  monotheism,  and  scholastic  philosophy 
was  dropped  in  favor  of  the  Newtonian ;  but  the  classic 
Gods  and  the  scholastic  philosophy  were  always  popular, 
and  the  newer  philosophies  won  their  victories  by  de- 
veloping compulsory  force.  Inertia  is  the  law  of  mind 
as  well  as  of  matter,  and  inertia  is  a  form  of  instinct; 
yet  in  western  civilization  it  has  never  held  its  own. 

The  pessimism  or  unpopularity  of  the  law  will  not 
prevent  its  enforcement,  if  it  develops  superior  force, 
even  if  it  leads  where  no  one  wants  to  go.  The  proof  is 
that  the  law  is  already  enforced  in  every  field  excepting  that 
of  human  history,  and  even  human  history  has  not  wholly 
escaped.  In  physics  it  rules  with  uncontested  sway.  In 
physiology,  the  old  army  of  Evolutionists  have  suffered 


THE  PROBLEM  159 

> 

defections  so  serious  that  no  discipline  remains.  A  full 
account  of  the  situation  would  need  an  amount  of  knowl- 
edge that  is  now  granted  to  no  one ;  but  the  most  trifling 
popular  science  is  enough  for  popular  teachers  Uke  our- 
selves. 

Every  one  knows  that  Darwin  owed  much  of  his  science 
as  well  as  of  his  success  to  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who  sup- 
plied him  with  the  doctrine  of  uniformity  and  the  evidence 
to  support  it.  Darwin's  own  assumptions  or  theories 
were  quite  sufficiently  difficult  ol  proof,  without  adding 
the  doctrine  of  uniformity ;  but  Sir  Charles'  abiUty  and 
authority  carried  the  point  in  spite  of  Kelvin's  protest 
that  imiformity  could  not  be  admitted  as  possible  under 
the  second  law  of  thermodynamics.  Lyell's  conservative 
system  of  evolution,  resting  on  several  broad  assumptions 
of  fact,  became  not  merely  a  physiological,  but  even  more 
a  philosophical  dogma,  and  in  a  literary  point  of  view  the 
Victorian  epoch  rested  largely,  —  perhaps  chiefly,  —  on 
the  faith  that  society  had  but  to  follow  where  science  led ; 

to  — 

"Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast, 
And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die" ; 

in  order  to  attain  perfection.  An  infinite  series  of 
imperceptible  steps,  continuous  under  uniform  conditions 
since  the  earUest  traces  of  organic  Ufe,  and  always  tending 


160     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

upwards  to  higher  intensities,  —  tensions,  —  potentials, 
—  according  to  the  growing  complexity  of  the  organism, 
had  already  taken  the  place  of  religious  dogma,  and 
bridged  the  gap  between  two  phases  of  thought. 

With  a  sense  of  vast  rehef ,  the  generation  which  began 
life  in  1850,  embraced  the  new  creed,  not  so  much  because 
it  was  proved,  as  because  it  was  convenient ;  but  it  met 
with  instant  difficulties  on  the  side  of  the  Darwinists 
themselves.  The  warmest  evolutionists  were  the  least 
confident,  not  only  about  adaptation  and  the  struggle  for 
existence,  but  also,  and  chiefly,  about  uniformity.  Heer's 
researches  on  the  arctic  flora,  already  cited  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  in  the  tenth  edition  of  his  ''Principles"  (London, 
1867),  seemed  to  upset  the  law  of  uniformity  from  top  to 
bottom  and  to  substitute  a  sweeping  law  of  catastrophe ; 
so  that  already  in  1879,  Saporta,  in  his  History  of  the 
World  of  Plants,  asserted  that  nothing  less  than  absolute 
revolution  in  cosmic  conditions  could  account  for  the 
changes  in  northern  vegetation.  During  the  whole  period 
since  the  eocene,  the  temperature  of  the  planet  had 
steadily  declined.  ''The  phenomenon  to  which  the 
lowering  of  temperature  must  be  referred,"  said  Saporta, 
"is  in  no  way  peculiar  to  Europe ;  it  has  nothing  sudden 
about  it,  or  accidental,  or  transient.  We  pointed  out  its 
origin  at  the  end  of  the  eocene;    we  have  marked  its 


THE  PROBLEM  161 

progress  by  its  increasing  intensity  in  the  polar  regions, 
and  by  its  gradual  extension  thence  towards  the  south. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  oligocene,  the  vegetation  of  the 
northern  temperate  zone  changes  character;  new  ele- 
ments, coming  from  the  north,  and  marking  the  first 
progress  of  a  refrigeration,  introduce  and  propagate 
themselves.  We  have  studied  the  signs  of  this  revolution, 
by  means  of  which  the  differences  of  latitude  tend  little 
by  little  to  accentuate  themselves.  ...  It  is  impossible 
not  to  admit,  when  we  consider  this  march  which  nothing 
stops,  and  which  continues  with  moderation  and  regu- 
larity, the  influence  of  a  cosmic  phenomenon  embracing 
the  terrestrial  globe  altogether"  (p.  322).  The  infer- 
ence followed :  —  "We  recognize  from  this  point  of  view 
as  from  others,  that  the  world  was  once  young;  then 
adolescent ;  that  it  has  even  passed  the  age  of  maturity ; 
man  has  come  late,  when  a  beginning  of  physical  decadence 
had  struck  the  globe,  his  domain."  ("Le  Monde  des 
Plantes,"  p.  109.) 

Nothing  could  be  more  fatal,  not  to  Darwin  but  to 
Darwin's  popular  following.  As  Newton  said  that  he 
was  never  a  Newtonian,  so  Darwin  might  perhaps  have 
said  that  he  was  never  a  Darwinian,  but  his  popular 
influence  lay  in  the  law  that  evolution  had  developed 
itself  in  unbroken  order  from  lower  to  higher.     Kelvin 


162    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

had  indeed,  flatly  contradicted  this  assumption  of  fact, 
but  had  done  so  from  the  physicist's  point  of  view,  as  a 
matter  of  solar  heat  and  terrestrial  cooling;  while 
Saporta's  studies  of  vegetation,  to  everybody's  astonish- 
ment, so  dramatically  confirmed  Kelvin's  mathematics 
that,  though  the  two  streams  of  thought  continued  to 
flow  in  opposite  directions,  Saporta  already  in  1878  had 
the  courage  to  incline  to  the  ''bold  suggestion  made  some 
years  ago  by  Dr.  Blandet,  and  approved  by  the  late  M. 
d'Archiac,"  to  the  effect  that,  in  times  before  the  creta- 
ceous, —  especially  well  shown  in  the  extravagance  of  the 
carboniferous,  —  the  sun  equaled  the  orbit  of  Mercury 
in  diameter.  The  long  epochs  known  as  the  Permian, 
Triassic,  Jurassic,  Cretaceous  and  Eocene  allowed  ample 
time  for  shrinkage  before  the  Miocene  first  proved  by  its 
temperate  vegetation,  that  the  sun  had  approached  its 
present  diameter,  and  could  no  longer  equably  warm  the 
world. 

Such  an  adhesion  to  the  law  of  thermodynamics,  only 
twenty  years  after  Darwin  and  Lyell  had  estabUshed 
their  system  on  the  law  of  Conservation,  seemed  to  strike 
a  very  serious  blow  at  the  theory  of  upward  evolution  as 
the  world  understood  it.  The  violent  contradiction 
between  Kelvin's  Degradation  and  Darwin's  Elevation 
was  so  profound,  —  so  flagrant,  —  so  vital  to  mankind, 


THE  PROBLEM  163 

that  the  historian  of  human  society  must  be  supposed  to 
have  watched  with  agonized  interest  the  direction  which 
science  should  take ;  since  the  decision  of  palaeontologists 
would  fatally  decide  his  own.  If  they  should  adhere  to 
the  high  authority  of  Saporta,  the  biologists  must  follow ; 
and  then  the  historian  of  man  would  find  himself  facing 
a  responsibility  such  as  had  never  before  entered  into  his 
imagination. 

Thirty  years  have  passed  since  Saporta  pubhshed  his 
"Monde  des  Plantes  avant  1' Apparition  de  I'Homme," 
and  a  whole  generation  has  indefatigably  collected,  dis- 
cussed, published  and  re-discussed  the  evidences,  with  re- 
sults recorded  in  a  library  of  books  and  in  a  score  of  great 
geological  museums.  With  the  truths  that  have  been  estab- 
lished or  the  theories  that  have  been  proposed,  historians 
need  trouble  themselves  little,  or  not  at  all,  further  than  to 
ask  what  theories  are  to-day  actually  taught  or  are  accepted 
by  standard  authorities.  For  American  purposes,  the 
object  is  best  reached  by  restricting  the  inquiry  to  the  last 
ten  or  fifteen  years,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  to  the  schools  of 
the  European  continent,  because  distance  makes  both 
teachers  and  teaching  impersonal.  Beginning  with  France, 
the  standard  authority  in  geology  is  said  to  be  Lapparent's 
Treatise  (3  vols.  Paris,  1906),  and  to  this  the  inquirer  turns 
to  ask  whether  Darwin's  ideas,  or  Kelvin's,  have  pre- 


164    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

vailed   in   the   French   schools.    The   answer   is   easily 
found :  — 

''If  there  is  one  fact,"  says  Lapparent  (Vol.  iii,  p. 
1951),  'Hhat  palaeontology',  and  especially  the  branch  of 
that  science  which  concerns  the  vegetable  world,  has  put 
in  strong  evidence,  it  is  assuredly  the  progressive  dimi- 
nution of  heat  in  the  high  latitudes  of  our  globe."  Among 
a  number  of  explanations  suggested,  none  satisfied  all 
the  conditions  except  that  of  M.  Blandet,  —  the  diminu- 
tion of  the  apparent  diameter  of  the  sun.  "Outside  of 
this  conception,  the  maintenance  of  the  solar  heat  is 
absolutely  inexplicable  (p.  1954).  .  .  .  One  cause  alone, 
according  to  the  laws  of  thermodynamics,  is  capable  of 
preserving  the  solar  energy  without  appeaUng  to  the  quite 
inadequate  help  of  outside  sources ;  —  this  is  the  phenom- 
enon of  condensation  in  the  sun.  By  the  means  of  such 
condensation,  the  calorific  power  of  the  sun  is  able  to 
maintain  itself  without  sensible  loss,  by  means  of  a  lessen- 
ing of  apparent  diameter  which  would  need  several 
thousand  years  to  become  perceptible  to  our  most  delicate 
apparatus.  .  .  .  But  if,  in  our  days,  the  sun,  reduced  as  it 
is,  undergoes  still  this  movement  of  concentration  neces- 
sary to  maintain  its  energy,  what  must  have  been  the  dif- 
ference of  its  dimensions  at  other  epochs  from  what  they 
are  now  ?    Nothing  is  more  logical  than  this  hypothesis, 


THE  PROBLEM  165 

and  since,  —  while  irreproachable  from  the  astronomic 
point  of  view,  —  it  is  alone  adequate  to  explain  the  palaeo- 
thermal  phenomena,  we  think  we  cannot  do  better  than 
propose  it  for  the  adhesion  of  geologists." 

Nothing  could  be  more  innocent  in  intention,  or  at  least 
in  appearance,  than  this  adhesion  to  the  second  law  of 
thermodynamics,  —  this  harmonizing  of  several  great 
branches  of  science,  —  this  unifying  of  nature ;  but  its 
consequences  to  the  old  law  of  Evolution  and  to  the 
school  of  -Darwin  were  beyond  disguise.  Lapparent 
went  on  to  indicate  some  of  them,  and  first  the  necessary 
abandonment  of  Lyell's  law  of  uniformity :  — 

"Let  us  content  ourselves,  then,  with  indicating  the 
possibiUty  of  this  solution,  while  affirming,  contrary  to  the 
doctrines  of  the  uniformitarian  school,  that  the  ancient 
history  of  our  planet  has  unrolled  itself  in  the  midst  of 
external  conditions  very  different  from  those  which  now 
surround  us." 

While  Lapparent  offered  this  theory  of  solar  shrinkage 
as  only  a  possible  solution,  other  geologists  were  working 
on  a  corollary  to  the  theory,  which  has  become  one  of 
the  conmionest  foundations  of  their  teaching.  Solar 
shrinkage  might  perhaps  be  suggested  as  a  doubtful 
possibility,  but  terrestrial  shrinkage,  which  rests  on  the 
same  law,  seems  to  be  now  commonly  admitted  as  a 


166    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATrc  DOGMA 

reasonably  orthodox  dogma.  Yet  terrestrial  shrinkage  m 
a  mere  derivative,  which  involves  solar  shrinkage  as  its 
logical  and  mathematical  concomitant.  If  adopted  as  a 
fundamental  law  of  geology,  it  must  be  admitted  as 
a  fundamental  law  of  solar  physics,  since  the  one  is  as 
inseparable  from  the  other  as  a  Siamese  twin.  Naturally 
the  theory  is  not  conceded  to  be  true ;  —  no  theory  is ;  — 
but  it  is  convenient ;  it  is  taught ;  and  the  chance  is  now 
small  that  any  geological  physicist  will  forego  the  temp- 
tation of  using  M.  Blandet's  theory  as  law. 

Fortunately  for  the  old  school  of  geologists,  —  as  well 
as  for  all  schools  of  historians,  —  the  few  certainties  of 
geology  as  of  history  are  so  easily  read  in  opposite  senses, 
that,  in  practice,  every  teacher  can  teach  —  and  ignore 
—  what  he  pleases.  Pure  geologists  still  adhere  more  or 
less  strictly  to  the  uniformitarian  creed  and  reject  the  con- 
clusions of  Heer  and  his  followers.  Geological  physicists 
still  teach  that  if  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics 
controlled  all  history  from  the  gaseous  nebula  to  the  glacial 
epoch,  it  has  certainly  controlled  the  few  days  or  years 
since  the  ice-cap  retired  from  the  Niagara  river.  In  that 
case,  man  became  the  most  advanced  type  of  physical 
decadence,  no  longer  at  the  top  but  at  the  bottom  of  the 
ladder,  in  face  of  accelerated  extinction. 

At  what  precise  moment  the  sun  reached,  imder  this 


THE  PROBLEM  167 

theory,  the  equilibrium  which  gave  the  utmost  exuberance 
to  organic  Hfe,  only  a  specialist  can  venture  to  say ;  but, 
from  the  language  of  their  text-books,  a  reader  gathers 
that  the  energy  of  vegetable  growth  is  supposed  to  have 
reached  its  cUmax  as  early  as  the  carboniferous,  — 
*'p4riode  de  luxe,  s'il  en  fut  jamais"  (Saporta,  73);  — 
and  that  when  this  amazing  vegetation  lost  its  wonderful 
power,  as  shown  in  the  coal-formations  (Lapparent,  ii, 
1027),  it  was  followed  by  an  equally  astonishing  animal 
growth  which  lasted  into  the  miocene  period.  There  — 
we  are  told,  —  degradation  began !  At  the  end  of  the 
miocene,  both  vegetable  and  animal  forms  of  life  are 
declared  to  offer  proof  that  the  poles  could  no  longer  sup- 
port their  previous  exuberance.  This  teaching  assumes 
that  the  equable  temperature,  whether  high  or  low,  which 
had  prevailed  from  the  poles  to  the  equator  gave  place 
to  cUmatic  differences  consequent  on  the  sim  having 
shrunk  towards  its  present  diameter.  Nature  instantly 
showed  the  shrinkage  of  energy.  "In  spite  of  the  multi- 
tude of  beings  which  have  disappeared  at  different  epochs," 
says  Gaudry  C'Essai,"  44),  "I  think  that  the  simi  of 
appearances  exceeded  that  of  extinctions  down  to  the  end 
of  the  miocene  period."  The  steady  decline  continued 
until  the  convulsion  of  the  glacial  epoch,  when,  in  the  midst 
of  a  wrecked  solar  system,   man   suddenly  appeared. 


168    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

"Since  this  great  event  occurred,"  according  to  Lap- 
parent  (hi,  1655),  ''the  organic  world  has  enriched  itself 
with  no  new  species,  but  several  forms  have  disappeared, 
among  those  that  surrounded  the  first  men;  and  the 
great  herbivorous  mammals,  already  on  their  decline, 
have  seen  their  principal  representatives,  little  by  little, 
quit  the  scene  of  the  world." 

This  statement,  as  a  mere  statement  of  fact,  seems  to 
be  accepted  as  rather  unduly  mild ;  but  not  yet  satisfied 
with  admitting  that  organic  geology,  like  inorganic, 
confirms  the  dissipation  of  energy  down  to  the  present 
day,  M.  Lapparent,  abandoning  all  hope  that  the  process 
can  ever  be  reversed,  concludes  (iii,  1961) :  "If  any  new 
term  is  still  to  be  looked  for,  it  seems  as  though  none 
could  be  imagined  other  than  an  era  where  the  Soul, 
freed  from  thebonds  of  matter,  should  dominate.  Except 
for  this  hope  there  are  none  but  sombre  perspectives  in 
sight  for  all  that  surrounds  us.  The  progress  of  the 
emersion  of  boreal  lands  seems  destined  to  extend  from 
step  to  step  the  influence  of  the  polar  ice.  The  sun, 
whose  condensation  is  already  far  advanced,  will  soon 
find  in  the  narrowing  of  its  diameter  no  sufficient  source 
for  maintaining  its  heat,  and  large  spots  will  appear  on  its 
surface,  destined  to  transform  themselves  into  a  dark 
shell.    The  day  when  the  extinction  of  the  central  lumi- 


THE  PROBLEM  169 

nary  shall  be  complete,  no  further  physical  or  physiological 
reaction  can  take  place  on  our  globe,  which  will  then  be 
reduced  to  the  temperature  of  space,  and  the  sole  Ught 
of  the  stars.  But,  perhaps,  before  arriving  there,  the 
globe  will  have  lost  its  oceans  and  its  atmosphere,  ab- 
sorbed in  the  pores  and  fissures  of  a  shell  whose  thickness 
will  increase  from  day  to  day." 

If  one,  and  by  far  the  most  extensive  period  of  terrestrial 
history,  is  already  taught  in  this  sense  by  physicists,  all 
biology,  including  human  history,  will  have  also  to  be  re- 
edited  by  them  according  to  this  lugubrious  plan;  and 
the  University  professor  of  history  as  it  has  been  hitherto 
understood,  will  soon  have  urgent  need  to  make  up  his 
mind  whether  to  accept  or  resist  it.  If  he  decides  to 
accept  it,  he  has  only  to  hold  his  tongue,  and  remain 
quietly  in  the  pleasant  meadows  of  antiquarianism,  pro- 
tected as  heretofore  by  the  convenient  and  sufficient 
axiom  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  history  is  not  a 
science,  and  society  not  an  organism ;  but  if  this  resource 
should  fail  him,  his  first  thought  will  be  to  find  alfies.  He 
will  seek  them  among  his  Darwinist  friends,  to  begin  with ; 
but  he  will  scarcely  finish  the  opening  chapter  of  the  last 
book  on  Transformation,  Mutation,  Inheritance,  or 
whatever  new  name  may,  as  one  writer  expresses  it, 
dissimulate  creative  or  destructive  force  under  the  term 


170     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Evolution,  without  discovering  that  the  famihar,  genial 
dispute  over  the  origin  of  species  has  turned  into  a 
sinister  and  almost  lurid  battle  over  the  extinction  of 
species,  for  which  the  Darwinian  theories  of  survival  are 
declared  inadequate  to  the  point  of  childishness. 

In  the  place  of  minute  variations  extending  over  in- 
definite time  under  uniform  conditions,  he  will  find  that 
views  have  been  put  prominently  forward  which  bear 
an  alarming  resemblance  to  the  second  law  of  thermo- 
dynamics. So,  one  palaeontologist, — DoUo, — formulated 
in  1893  the  law  of  evolution  in  three  sections,  each  a 
contradiction  to  the  old  law.  —  1.  Development  has  pro- 
ceeded by  leaps.  —  2.  It  is  irreversible.  —  3.  It  is  hmited. 
Another  authority,  Rosa,  gave  new  form  to  an  old  idea, 
by  showing  how  variabiUty  proceeds  according  to  a  law 
of  progressive  reduction ;  —  that  is  to  say,  every  series  of 
forms  is  destined  to  extinction  according  to  the  degree  of 
its  specialization.  Even  if  this  law  were  not  rigorously 
exact,  ''it  is  perfectly  exact  to  say  that  the  number  and 
extent  of  variations  diminishes  as  the  specialization 
advances."  The  reader,  who  marks  with  some  nervous- 
ness that  Man  has  certainly  advanced  by  leaps,  and  that 
his  progress  seems  to  be  irreversible,  seeks  at  once  to  know 
whether  he  shows  signs  of  reaching  its  hmit ;  and,  for  an 
answer,  appeals  to  the  only  scientific  source  of  information, 
—  the  anthropologist. 


THE  PROBLEM  171 

Unless  the  inquirer  is  full  of  courage,  he  will  be  aghast 
at  the  confusion  of  responses  which  his  prayer  disturbs. 
Yet  he  knows,  if  he  is  an  evolutionist,  that  Darwinians 
have  always  had  trouble  over  the  origin  and  end  of  Man. 
To  Darwin  and  Haeckel  the  difficulties  were  as  great  as 
to  their  successors.  The  mystery  of  man  was  then,  and 
still  remains,  a  scientific  scandal  which  has  inevitably 
roused  bad  temper,  and  sometimes  bad  manners,  even  in 
the  centres  of  science  itself.  Every  investigator  in  turn 
evaded,  with  more  or  less  dexterity,  —  or  broke  through, 
with  more  or  less  recklessness,  —  the  difficulties  that  sur- 
rounded him;  but  the  difficulties  outhved  the  explana- 
tions. The  first  and  most  notorious  was  due  to  the  fact 
that,  while  the  strict  theory  of  evolution  from  lower  to 
higher  made  it  reasonable  to  assume  that  man  was 
descended  from  that  group  of  animals  which  resembled 
him  most,  and  while  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  nearest 
group  which  could  be  supposed  to  lead  up  to  him  was 
that  of  the  anthropoid  ape,  the  anthropologists  instantly 
found  so  many  scientific  objections  to  this  fine  of  ascent 
that  it  had  to  be  abandoned  from  the  start.  The  skull  of 
the  young  anthropoid,  it  appeared,  had  more  resemblance 
than  that  of  its  adult  parent,  to  the  skull  of  man ;  in  other 
words,  the  anthropoid  might  be  a  degraded  man,  but 
man  could  not  be  a  developed  anthropoid.    The  search 


172    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

would  have  to  go  much  further  back,  to  find  some  earlier 
mammal  with  less  resemblance  to  man,  and  therefore  with 
fewer  evidences  of  descent,  and  less  probability  of  satisfy- 
ing the  rules  of  evidence.  Each  step  in  the  ascent  added 
enormously  to  the  difficulties  of  proof. 

Every  evolutionist  knows  how  disastrously  this  first 
failure  affected  anthropology ;  nor  was  the  case  bettered 
for  the  anthropologist  by  Cope,  who,  reasoning  from  the 
teeth,  made  man  descend  from  an  eocene  lemur,  and 
through  him  from  the  marsupials,  without  passing 
through  any  known  group  of  anthropoids  at  all ;  —  a  leap 
backwards  covering  such  vast  epochs  of  unknown  time 
and  change,  —  only  to  end  in  a  type  much  lower  than 
that  of  the  despised  apes,  —  as  to  have  no  more  value  for 
human  history  than  though,  instead  of  a  hypothetical 
lemur,  the  palaeontologists  had  offered  as  an  ancestor  a 
hypothetical  hngula  of  archean  time. 

All  this  fumbfing  for  an  ancestry  that  should  have  been 
self-evident,  was  sufficiently  disconcerting  to  historians 
who  cared  little  what  kind  of  a  pedigree  was  given  them, 
but  greatly  wanted  to  be  sure  of  it ;  and  who  found  them- 
selves embarrassed  with  a  primitive  man,  —  or  probably 
a  variety  of  primitive  men,  —  running  back  without 
intermediate  Hnks  to  a  hypothetical,  primitive,  eocene 
lemur,  whom  no  one  but  a  trained  palaeontologist  could 


THE  PROBLEM  173 

distinguish  from  a  hypothetical,  primitive  opossum,  or 
weasel  or  squirrel  or  any  other  small  form  of  what  is 
conunonly  known  as  vermin.  For  the  historian,  the 
lemur  was  a  grievance.  It  offered  no  foundation  for  any 
theory,  whether  of  conservation,  elevation,  or  degra- 
dation, physical  or  moral.  Even  the  Church  had  always 
admitted  as  sound  doctrine  that  God  might  have  used 
more  or  less  consecutive  types  for  his  creations ;  but  be- 
tween the  hypothetic  lemur  and  the  talking  man,  no  type, 
consecutive  or  other,  existed  for  God  to  use. 

The  historian  had  certainly  a  right  to  complain  of  this 
Pharaonic  command  to  adopt  a  lemurian  and  marsupial 
ancestry,  including  the  duck-billed  platypus,  and  much 
more;  but  had  he  rashly  attempted  to  seek  further,  he 
might  probably  have  found  worse.  Indeed,  from  the 
moment  when  science  had  exhausted  the  whole  geological 
series,  —  recent,  pleistocene,  pliocene,  miocene,  ohgocene, 
and  part  of  the  eocene,  —  without  coming  upon  any 
reasonable  or  respectable  ancestor  at  all,  the  search  had 
become,  for  the  historian's  purposes,  worse  than  futile. 
He  would  do  much  better  to  fall  back  on  the  mere  hope 
that  his  own  historical  parentage  was  lost  under  the  polar 
snows,  —  Uke  the  carboniferous  forests,  —  where  some 
happier  anthropoid  had  been  born  and  bred  in  temperate 
miocene  luxury,  to  be  driven  southward  before  the  ice-cap 


174    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

which  obUterated  every  trace  of  him  and  of  his  polar  Eden 
as  he  slowly  drifted  towards  the  fortieth  parallel.  Such 
a  vague  but  aristocratic  origin  would  reUeve  him  from 
quartering  the  arms  of  the  lemur,  and  might  help  him 
to  suppress  the  opossum. 

Hoping  for  the  best,  he  next  turns  to  the  last  text- 
book,—  say  Hopf's  ''Human  Species"  (London,  1909), 
—  and  first  notes  that  it  still  rests  the  chief  weight  of  the 
argument,  as  Cope  did,  on  the  teeth,  but  in  a  sense  that 
startles  even  a  sincerely  convinced  evolutionist.  Among 
the  first  authorities  quoted  is  Professor  Klaatsch  of  Heidel- 
berg :  —  "As  in  his  opinion,  man  by  no  means  stands  at 
the  head  of  all  hving  beings  with  respect  to  all  parts  of 
his  organization,  so  too  he  considers  that  the  human 
teeth  are  among  the  most  primitive  possessed  by  any  of 
the  existing  mammals.  Had  man  not  sacrificed  twelve 
teeth  in  the  course  of  his  gradual  development,  he  would 
now  have  forty-four,  the  highest  number  possessed  by  any 
land-dwelling  mammal."  Assuredly,  according  to  actual 
standards  of  physical  beauty,  a  man  —  and  still  more  a 
woman  —  with  forty-four  teeth  would  raise  scruples 
about  the  law  of  evolution  from  lower  to  higher;  but 
the  Professor  evidently  regards  the  modest  number  of  our 
actual  teeth  as  a  decadence;  and  goes  on  to  say  that 
even  as  to  his  molars,  man  ''has  not  progressed  beyond 


THE  PROBLEM  175 

the  stage  of  development  reached  by  the  mammals  in  the 
tertiary  period."  Not  a  step  have  the  physiologists 
advanced  in  thirty  years  towards  proof  of  any  rise  in 
vital  energy.  Greatly  concerned  at  this  evidence  of 
feebleness  in  the  evolution  of  man  from  the  eocene  lemur, 
the  historian  of  human  society  naturally  asks  what 
human  senses  show  more  development  than  is  proved  by 
the  teeth.  Hopf  makes  no  pretence  of  flattery  even  on 
this  point.  "Speaking  generally,  man,  not  only  in  a 
state  of  civiHzation,  but  also  the  primitive  savage,  —  the 
Papuan,  for  example,  —  has  a  much  less  acute  sense  of 
smell  than  that  possessed  by  animals"  (Hopf,  240). 
Finally,  though  discouraged,  the  historian  probably  in- 
quires in  what,  then,  the  evolution  of  man  from  lower 
to  higher  is  beheved  to  consist;  and  he  learns  that  it 
consists  in  the  extraordinary  development  of  the  brain, 
with  its  instruments,  the  hand,  the  foot,  and  the  vocal 
organs;  but  even  the  brain  is  said  to  show  extremely 
sUght  real  differences  from  that  of  the  higher  monkeys 
(Vulpian,  "Legons,"  1866).  "The  brain  has  passed 
through  evolution  in  all  the  branches  of  the  tree  of 
manamals ;  it  is  highly  circumvoluted  at  the  extremity  of 
certain  branches;  sometimes  the  richness  of  its  circum- 
volutions exceeds  that  of  Man"  (Topinard,  334) ;  but  its 
only  marked  development  is  in  weight,  and  in  number  of 
ganglion  cells  (Hopf,  168). 


176    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Inevitably  the  puzzled  historian  asks  almost  stupidly 
whether  the  anthropologist  holds  this  increase  of  brain  to 
prove  evolution  from  lower  to  higher,  and  he  receives  an 
answer  that  totally  demorahzes  him.  The  weight  of  the 
brain  is  not  asserted  to  be  a  gauge  of  its  energy.  Neither 
instinct  nor  reason  is  supposed  to  have  any  relation  to 
the  weight  of  the  brain;  on  the  contrary,  "in  a  list  of 
seventeen  brains,  the  heaviest  known,  going  from  1729 
to  2020  grams,  there  are  seven  lunatics,"  and  only  three 
men  of  science,  about  whose  degree  of  aberration  no 
exact  statistics  can  be  reasonably  expected  (Topinard, 
216). 

This  is  only  the  beginning  of  anthropological  evolution 
from  lower  to  higher.  The  anthropologist  seems  in- 
clined to  hold  that  what  is  called  genius  has  no  relation 
with  weight  of  brain;  but  that,  even  though  it  had, 
it  would  not  help  evolution,  if  Arndt  is  right  in  asserting 
that  superior  mental  endowment  of  any  kind  is  a  sign 
of  degeneration;  or  if  Branca  is  right  in  thinking  it 
impossible  that  the  progressive  enlargement  of  the  human 
brain  can  go  on  indefinitely  without  enfeebUng  the  body 
till  it  dies  out;  or  if  Hopf  is  right  (p.  374),  in  admitting 
that,  in  civihzed  races,  increase  in  intellectual  power  often 
goes  with  a  narrowing  of  the  jaw  and  an  early  loss  of  the 
teeth,  and  of  the  hair,  and  in  women  with  an  inabiUty  to 


THE  PROBLEM  177 

suckle  their  children.  To  complete  the  picture,  the  an- 
thropologist who  hesitates  to  say  in  what  sense  the  brain 
should  be  regarded  as  proving  evolution  from  lower  to 
higher,  shows  not  the  least  sign  of  doubt  in  regard  to 
the  degree  to  which  Man  is  speciahzed,  particularly  as 
shown  by  his  brain,  his  hand,  his  foot,  and  his  vocal 
organs.  In  fact,  according  to  Louis  Agassiz,  man  is  "the 
last  term  of  a  series  beyond  which,  following  the  plan  on 
which  the  whole  animal  kingdom  is  built,  no  further  prog- 
ress is  materially  possible"  (*'De  I'Esprit,"  p.  34),  and 
is,  therefore,  under  Rosa's  law  of  progressive  reduction, 
destined  to  be  rapidly  extinguished. 

Thus  the  physical  geologist  has  frankly  and  finally  gone 
over  to  the  side  of  Kelvin ;  the  palaeontologist  has  kept 
him  company,  or  even  went  before  him ;  while  the  anthro- 
pologist is  somewhat  painfully  hesitating,  obedient  to 
the  physicists,  but  trying  to  remain  true  to  humanity, 
though  acutely  conscious  that  the  two  directions  cannot 
be  reconciled.  For  many  years  M.  Topinard  has  held  a 
sort  of  position  as  semi-official  anthropologist  of  France, 
but  he  has  become  incoherent  with  age,  finding  himself 
caught  between  the  irreconcilable  contradictions  of 
science  and  sentiment:  —  "The  end,  as  far  as  concerns 
us,  we  know,"  he  says  in  his  last  volume  ("L'Anthro- 
pologie,"    Paris,   1900) ;    "our  earth  will  cease  to  be 


178     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

habitable;  it  will  grow  cold;  will  lose  its  atmosphere 
and  its  moisture,  and  will  resemble  our  actual  moon. 
Previously,  evolution,  from  progressive  will  become 
stationary,  then  regressive.  Some  day,  as  Huxley  sug- 
gests, the  lichens,  the  diatomaceae,  the  protococcus,  will 
perhaps  be  the  only  beings  adapted  to  the  conditions ;  — 
then,  nothing!"  The  picture  seems  sad  enough,  yet 
M.  Topinard  might  have  added  that,  according  to  his  own 
palaeontologist  authorities,  the  evolution  of  life  on  the 
earth  had  ceased  to  be  progressive  some  millions  of  years 
ago,  and  had  passed  through  its  stationary  period  into 
regression  before  man  ever  appeared ;  while  M.  Topinard 
himself  adds  (pp.  321,  370)  that,  "to  his  stupefaction," 
he  has  reached  conclusions  of  his  own  which  seem,  to 
readers  who  do  not  take  these  opinions  too  seriously, 
exceedingly  like  an  admission  that  he  finds  himself  an 
example  of  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics :  — 

''Yes!  there  is  contradiction  between  the  animal 
man,  —  as  he  was  in  a  state  of  nature,  and  as  he  has 
maintained  himself  to  our  day,  —  and  the  social  man 
such  as  he  ought  to  be.  Yes !  the  objective  realities  of 
science  are  in  contradiction  with  the  subjective  aspirations 
of  man.  Yes !  nature  laughs  at  our  conceptions.  Society 
has  been  born  of  man,  and  has  been  built  on  sand,  often 
with  only  materials  of  convention.     The  individual  for 


THE  PROBLEM  179 

whom  it  is  created  is  always  its  worst  enemy ;  he  admits 
it,  but  will  not  bend  to  its  necessities." 

Although  M.  Topinard  adhered  bUndly  to  the  second  law 
of  thermodynamics  in  regard  to  the  approaching  end  of 
the  world,  and  was  logically  obliged  to  accept  its  con- 
clusion that  all  useful  work  or  progress,  social  or  mechan- 
ical, depended  on  inequalities  of  intensity,  endowed  with 
energy  still  left  to  dissipate,  the  moment  he  reahzes  that 
such  inequahties  still  exist,  and  that  therefore  progress 
is  still  possible,  he  bewails  the  fact  as  an  inexplicable  and 
unfortunate  mystery.  Such  cross-purposes  have  become 
almost  a  standard  rule  in  sociology.  They  have  always 
been  the  rule  in  history. 

In  the  earUer  scientific  comimentaries  on  the  Law  of 
Dissipation,  astronomers  and  physicists  commonly  took 
some  httle  pains  to  soften  the  harshness  of  their  doom  by 
assurances  that  the  prospect  was  not  so  black  as  it  seemed, 
but  that  the  sun  would  adapt  itself  to  man's  convenience 
by  allowing  some  thousands  or  milhons  of  years  to  elapse 
before  its  extinction.  This  pleasing  thoughtfulness  has 
vanished.  Geologists,  when  most  generous,  scarcely 
allow  more  than  thirty  thousand  years  since  the  last  ice- 
cap began  its  partial  recession;  while,  quite  commonly, 
they  insist  that  their  most  careful  and  elaborate  estimates 
do  not  justify  them  in  granting  more  than  a  quarter  of 


180    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

that  time  to  the  very  incomplete  process  of  clearing  away 
the  ice  and  snow  from  the  streets  of  primitive  New  York 
and  Boston.  The  cataclysmic  ruin  that  spread  over  all 
the  most  populous  parts  of  the  northern  hemisphere  while 
the  accomplished  and  highly  educated  architects  of 
Nippur  were  laying  the  arched  foundations  of  their  city, 
has,  it  is  true,  been  partially  covered  or  disguised  under 
new  vegetation;  but  even  this  brief  retrospective  re- 
prieve is  darkened  by  the  earnest  assurances  of  the  most 
popular  text-books  and  teachers  that  they  can  hold  out 
no  good  reason  for  hoping  that  the  exemption  will  last. 
The  sun  is  ready  to  condense  again  at  any  moment, 
causing  another  violent  disequilibrium,  to  be  followed  by 
another  great  outburst  and  waste  of  its  expiring  heat. 

The  humor  of  these  prophecies  seldom  strikes  a  reader 
with  its  full  force  in  America,  but  in  Europe  the  love  of 
dramatic  effect  inspires  every  line.  Compared  with  the 
superficial  and  self-complacent  optimism  which  seems  to 
veneer  the  surface  of  society,  the  frequent  and  tragic 
outbursts  of  physicists,  astronomers,  geologists,  biologists, 
and  sociological  socialists  announcing  the  end  of  the 
world,  surpass  all  that  could  be  conceived  as  a  natural 
product  of  the  time.  The  note  of  warning  verges  on  the 
grotesque ;  it  is  hysterically  solemn ;  a  little  more,  and  it 
would  sound  like  that  of  a  Salvation  army;    a  small 


THE  PROBLEM  181 

natural  shock  might  easily  turn  it  to  a  panic.  Naturally 
a  historian  is  most  interested  in  what  concerns  primitive 
history,  and  all  the  relations  of  primitive  man  to  nature. 
He  takes  up  the  last  work  on  the  subject,  which  happens 
in  1910,  to  be  "Les  Premieres  Civilisations,"  by  M. 
J.  de  Morgan,  published  in  June,  1909.  M.  de  Morgan 
is  one  of  the  highest  authorities  —  possibly  quite  the 
highest  authority  —  on  his  subject,  and  this  volume 
contains  the  whole  result  of  his  vast  study.  Unconscious 
of  thermodynamics,  he  treats  primitive  man  as  a  sort  of 
function  of  the  glacial  epoch,  and  ends  by  telling  his 
readers  (p.  97) :  — 

"The  glacial  period  is  far  from  being  ended ;  our  times, 
which  still  make  an  integral  part  of  it,  are  characterized 
by  an  important  retreat  of  the  glaciers,  started  long  before 
the  beginnings  of  history.  It  is  to  be  supposed  that  this 
retreat  of  the  ice  is  not  definitive,  but  that  the  cold  will 
return,  and  with  it  the  depopulation  of  a  part  of  our  globe. 
Nothing  can  enable  us  to  foretell  the  amplitude  of  this 
future  oscillation,  or  the  lot  which  the  laws  of  nature 
destine  to  humanity.  Diu*ing  this  cataclysm  revolutions 
will  occur  which  the  most  fecund  imagination  cannot 
conceive,  —  disasters  the  more  horrible  because,  while 
the  population  of  the  earth  goes  on  increasing  every  day, 
and  even  the  less  favored  districts  little  by  little  become 


182  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

inhabited,  the  different  human  groups,  crowded  back  one 
on  another,  and  finding  no  more  space  for  existence,  will 
be  driven  to  internecine  destruction." 

M.  de  Morgan  belongs  to  the  most  serious  class  of 
historians,  while  M.  Camille  Flammarion,  the  distin- 
guished director  of  the  Meudon  observatory,  besides  being 
a  serious  astronomer,  is  also  one  of  the  most  widely  read, 
and  most  highly  intelligent,  vulgarizers  of  science. 
When  he  reaches  the  point  of  describing  the  solar  catas- 
trophe in  his  popular  astronomy,  he  lays  bare  an  enormous 
field  for  harrowing  horrors  ('^Astronomie  Populaire," 
102,  103,  Paris,  1905) :  — 

"Life  and  human  activity  will  insensibly  be  shut  up 
within  the  tropical  zones.  Saint  Petersburg,  Berlin, 
London,  Paris,  Vienna,  Constantinople,  Rome,  will 
successively  sink  to  sleep  under  their  eternal  cerements. 
During  many  centuries,  equatorial  humanity  will  under- 
take vain  arctic  expeditions  to  rediscover  under  the  ice 
the  sites  of  Paris,  of  Bordeaux,  of  Lyons,  of  Marseilles. 
The  sea-shores  will  have  changed  and  the  map  of  the  earth 
will  be  transformed.  No  longer  will  man  live,  —  no 
longer  will  he  breathe,  —  except  in  the  equatorial  zone, 
down  to  the  day  when  the  last  tribe,  already  expiring  in 
cold  and  hunger,  shall  camp  on  the  shores  of  the  last  sea 
in  the  rays  of  a  pale  sun  which  will  henceforward  illumine 


THE  PROBLEM  183 

an  earth  that  is  only  a  wandering  tomb,  turning  around  a 
useless  Ught  and  a  barren  heat.  Surprised  by  the  cold, 
the  last  human  family  has  been  touched  by  the  finger  of 
death,  and  soon  their  bones  will  be  buried  under  the 
shroud  of  eternal  ice.  The  historian  of  nature  would 
then  be  able  to  write :  —  '  Here  lies  the  entire  humanity 
of  a  world  which  has  lived !  Here  lie  all  the  dreams  of 
ambition,  all  the  conquests  of  military  glory,  all  the 
resounding  affairs  of  finance,  all  the  systems  of  an  im- 
perfect science,  and  also  all  the  oaths  of  mortals'  love! 
Here  he  all  the  beauties  of  earth ! '  —  But  no  mortuary 
stone  will  mark  the  spot  where  the  poor  planet  shall  have 
rendered  its  last  sigh!" 

As  though  to  assure  the  pubUc  that  he  knows  what  he 
is  talking  about,  M.  Flammarion,  who  is  a  practical 
astronomer,  goes  on  with  a  certain  sombre  exaltation,  like 
a  religious  prophet,  to  say  that  the  terrors  he  predicts 
are  of  common  occurrence  in  astronomy,  and  leaves  his 
scholars  to  infer  that  nature  regards  her  end  as  attained 
only  when  she  has  treated  man  as  an  enemy  to  be 
crushed :  — 

''Already  we  have  seen  twenty-five  stars  sparkle  with  a 
spasmodic  light  in  the  heavens,  and  fall  back  in  extinction 
neighboring  death!  Already  some  of  the  brilliant  stars 
hailed  by  our  fathers  have  disappeared  from  the  charts  of 


184     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  sky,  and  a  great  number  of  red  stars  have  entered 
into  their  period  of  extinction !" 

Volumes  would  be  needed  if  a  writer  should  attempt 
to  follow  the  track  of  this  idea  through  all  the  branches 
of  present  thought ;  but,  without  unnecessarily  disturbing 
the  labors  of  anthropology  and  biology,  the  merest  insect 
might  be  excused  for  asking  what  happens  to  fellow  insects, 
who,  like  himself,  are  enjoying  the  precarious  hospitality 
of  these  numerous  solar  systems.  M.  de  Morgan  and 
M.  Flammarion  are  contented  with  freezing  them;  but 
M.  Lapparent  takes  the  loftier  view  that  they  will  do 
better  to  become  disembodied  spirits ;  which  is  even  less 
likely  to  suit  either  the  American  professor  or  the  Anaer- 
ican  student,  whose  ideas  of  education  are  exceptionally 
practical.  The  "soul,  freed  from  the  bonds  of  matter," 
seems  to  require  no  education  imless  in  the  passive  con- 
sciousness of  pure  mathematics  and  logic,  which  has 
hitherto  been  the  weakest  side  of  the  American  student, 
who  is  averse  even  to  the  ingenuous  simplicity  of 
logarithms  and  vectors.  More  than  this,  the  law  of 
degradation  inexorably  impUes  that,  throughout  the  whole 
series  of  phases  which  may  intervene  in  the  future  as  in 
the  past,  in  the  dissipation  of  the  higher  intensities,  a 
sympathetic  exhaustion  must  be  expected  in  all  the  ener- 
gies dependent  on  the  central  system,  among  which,  as 


THE  PROBLEM  185 

the  palaeontologists  and  physicists  have  assured  us,  the 
vital  energies  are  not  only  the  most  dependent,  but  also 
and  particularly  the  most  sensitive.  Physical  or  mental, 
they  should,  according  to  theory,  suffer  an  accelerated 
decline,  and  yet  their  actual  position  should  also  show  a 
certain  lag  behind  the  rate  of  the  central  energy.  They 
are  really  worse  off  than  they  seem.  The  soothing  vision 
of  thousands  or  milhons  of  years,  for  the  ultimate  extinc- 
tion of  solar  energy,  protects  the  Universities  to  a  highly 
inadequate  degree  from  their  own  extinction  in  the 
process.  All  energies  which  are  convertible  into  heat 
must  suffer  degradation ;  among  these,  as  the  physicists 
expressly  insist,  are  all  vital  processes;  the  mere  tem- 
porary approach  to  a  final  equilibrium  would  be  fatal; 
and,  among  all  the  infinite  possibihties  of  evolution,  the 
only  absolute  certainty  in  physics  is  that  the  earth  every 
day  approaches  it.  No  one  can  be  trusted  to  express 
so  much  as  an  opinion  about  the  moment  when  any 
special  vital  process  may  expect  to  be  reduced  in  energy ; 
man  and  beast  can,  at  the  best,  look  forward  only  to  a 
diversified  agony  of  twenty  milUon  years;  but  at  no 
instant  of  this  considerable  period  can  the  professor  of 
mathematics  flatter  either  himself  or  his  students  with  an 
exclusive  or  extended  hope  of  escaping  imbecility. 

According  to  some  geologists,  this  view  is  extravagantly 


186    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

—  almost  ridiculously  —  optimistic ;  but  with  the  scien- 
tific correctness  of  these  opinions,  the  historian  is  not  con- 
cerned. He  asks  only  how  far  the  teaching  of  his  col- 
leagues contradicts  his  own,  and  how  far  society  sides  with 
his  contradictors.  His  question  is  difficult  to  answer. 
At  first  sight  he  is  conscious  of  no  divergence.  Society 
has  the  air  of  taking  for  granted  its  indefinite  progress 
towards  perfection  with  more  confidence,  and  some- 
times with  more  dogmatism  than  in  1830,  when  Macaulay 
made  it  a  Uterary  law  by  his  famous  polemic  against 
Southey.  Yet  the  same  society  has  acquired  a  growing 
habit  of  feeling  its  own  pulse,  and  registering  its  own 
temperature,  from  day  to  day;  of  prescribing  to  itself 
new  regimes  from  year  to  year ;  and  of  doubting  its  own 
health  like  a  nervous  invalid.  Granting  that  the  intended 
effect  of  intellectual  education  is,  —  as  Bacon,  Descartes, 
and  Kant  began  by  insisting,  —  a  habit  of  doubt,  it  is 
only  in  a  very  secondary  sense  a  habit  of  timidity  or 
despair.  To  a  certain  point,  the  more  education,  the 
more  hesitation;  but  beyond  that  point,  confidence 
should  begin.  Keeping  Europe  still  in  view  for  illustration 
and  assuming  for  the  moment  that  America  does  not  exist, 
every  reader  of  the  French  or  German  papers  knows  that 
not  a  day  passes  without  producing  some  uneasy  discussion 
of  supposed  social  decrepitude ;  —  falHng  off  of  the  birth- 


THE  PROBLEM  187 

rate ;  —  decline  of  rural  population ;  —  lowering  of  army- 
standards  ;  —  multiplication  of  suicides ;  —  increase  of 
insanity  or  idiocy,  —  of  cancer,  —  of  tuberculosis ;  — 
signs  of  nervous  exhaustion,  —  of  enfeebled  vitality,  — 
*' habits"  of  alcoholism  and  drugs,  —  failure  of  eye-sight 
in  the  young,  —  and  so  on,  without  end,  coupled  with 
suggestions  for  correcting  these  evils  such  as  remind  a 
historian  of  the  Lex  Poppaea  and  the  Roman  Empire 
rather  than  they  prove  that  careless  confidence  in  itself 
which  ought  to  stamp  the  rapid  rise  of  social  energy 
which  every  one  asserts  and  admits.  A  great  newspaper 
opens  the  discussion  of  a  social  reform  by  the  axiom  that 
"there  are  unmistakable  signs  of  deterioration  in  the 
race."  The  County  Council  of  London  publishes  a 
yearly  volume  of  elaborate  statistics,  only  to  prove,  accord- 
ing to  the  London  Times,  that  "the  great  city  of  to-day," 
of  which  Berhn  is  the  most  significant  type,  "exhibits  a 
constantly  diminishing  vitality";  and,  in  almost  the 
same  breath,  other  journals  exult  in  showing  that  the 
globe  is  rapidly  becoming  a  suburb  of  the  great  cities. 
Rarely  does  the  press  dwell  on  proofs  of  social  evolution 
except  as  shown  negatively  in  dechne  of  the  death-rate,  or 
of  illiteracy,  or  in  relief  from  pain,  and  never  does  the 
statistician  or  sociologist  help  the  historian  to  any  clear 
understanding  of  the  progress  expected  as  his  literary  goal. 


188    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  medical  profession  is  singularly  shy  of  pledges.  The 
poets  are  pessimists  to  a  man  —  and  to  a  woman.  The 
legislators  pass  half  their  time,  in  Germany,  France,  and 
England,  framing  social  legislation,  of  which  a  large  part 
rests  on  the  right  and  duty  of  society  to  protect  itself 
against  itself,  not  under  the  fiction  of  elevating  itself 
from  lower  to  higher,  but  —  as  in  the  case  of  alcohol  and 
drugs  —  to  protect  itself  from  deterioration  by  the 
exercise  of  powers  analogous  to  the  power  of  war. 

According  to  the  sociologists,  the  most  serious  symptom 
of  all  is  the  extension  of  philosophical  schools  founded  on 
the  supposed  failure  of  society :  —  "The  formation  of  these 
great  systems  is  the  sign  that  the  pessimist  current  has 
reached  an  abnormal  degree  of  intensity  due  to  some 
perturbation  of  the  social  organism.  Now  we  all  know 
how  they  have  multiplied  in  our  day.  To  get  a  just  idea 
of  their  number  and  their  importance,  we  have  to  con- 
sider not  merely  the  philosophies  which  officially  profess 
that  character,  like  those  of  Schopenhauer,  von  Hartmann, 
etc.,  but  we  must  also  take  account  of  all  those  which, 
under  different  names,  are  the  results  of  the  same  spirit. 
The  anarchist,  the  esthete,  the  mystic,  the  revolutionary 
socialist,  even  if  they  do  not  despair  of  the  future,  agree 
with  the  pessimist  in  the  same  sentiment  of  hatred  and 
disgust  for  whatever  is;  in  the  same  need  of  destroying 


THE  PROBLEM  189 

the  real,  and  escaping  from  it.  The  collective  melan- 
choly would  not  have  invaded  consciousness  to  that  point 
imless  it  has  taken  morbid  development;  and  in  con- 
sequence the  development  of  suicide  which  results  from  it, 
is  of  the  same  nature.  All  the  proofs  unite  in  causing  us 
to  regard  the  enormous  increase  which  has  shown  itself 
within  a  century  in  the  number  of  voluntary  deaths,  as 
a  pathological  phenomenon  which  becomes  every  day 
more  menacing." — Emile  Durkheim,  "Le  Suicide." 
Paris,  1897. 

As  yet  the  press  is  alarmist  with  decency,  even  in  Paris 
and  Berlin,  but  at  the  rate  of  progress  since  1870,  the 
press  might  soon  learn  to  blacken  the  prospects  of  human- 
ity with  all  the  picturesque  genius  of  Camille  Flammarion. 
A  Uttle  more  superficial  knowledge  is  all  it  needs;  the 
general  disposition  is  abeady  excellent.  Meanwhile, 
the  teacher  of  history  has  fallen  out  of  sight.  The 
freedom  that  was  Hberally  extended  to  others  was  denied 
to  him.  Supposing  Kelvin's  law,  with  Lapparent's  con- 
clusions, and  Flammarion's  illustrations,  to  be  rigorously 
true,  and  that  its  truth  was  admitted  in  biology  as  in 
physics,  the  American  professor  who  should  begin  his 
annual  course  by  announcing  to  his  class  that  their  year's 
work  would  be  devoted  to  showing  in  American  history 
"a,  universal  tendency  to  the  dissipation  of  energy"  and 


190    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

degradation  of  thought,  which  would  soon  end  in  making 
America  ''improper  for  the  habitation  of  man  as  he  is 
now  constituted,"  might  not  fear  the  fate  of  Giordano 
Bruno,  but  would  certainly  expect  that  of  Galileo,  even 
though  he  knew  that  every  member  of  the  Cardinals' 
College  of  professors  held  the  same  opinion.  The 
University  would  have  to  protect  itself  by  dismissing  him. 
The  truth  or  the  error  of  the  three  Laws  of  Evolution 
does  not  properly  concern  the  teacher.  No  physicist 
can,  in  these  days,  be  expected  to  take  oath  that  Dalton's 
atoms,  or  Willard  Gibbs'  phases,  or  Bernouilli's  kinetic 
gases,  are  true.  He  uses  for  his  scholars  the  figure  or  the 
formula  which  best  suits  their  convenience.  The  historian 
or  sociologist  is  alone  restricted  in  the  use  of  formulas 
which  shock  the  moral  sense;  yet  the  stoppage  of  dis- 
cussion in  the  historical  lecture-room  cannot  affect  the 
teaching  of  the  same  young  men  in  the  physical  laboratory, 
—  still  less  the  legislation  of  their  parents  at  the  State 
capital;  it  would  merely  ruin  the  school  of  history. 
However  much  to  be  regretted  is  such  a  result,  society 
cannot  safely  permit  itself  to  be  condemned  to  a  lingering 
death,  which  is  sure  to  tend  towards  suicide,  merely  to 
suit  the  convenience  of  school-teachers.  The  dilemima  is 
real ;  it  may  become  serious ;  in  any  case  it  needs  to  be 
understood. 


THE  PROBLEM  191 

The  battle  of  Evolution  has  never  been  wholly  won; 
the  chances  at  this  moment  favor  the  fear  that  it  may  yet 
be  wholly  lost.  The  Darwinist  no  longer  talks  of  Evolu- 
tion; he  uses  the  word  Transformation.  The  historian 
of  human  society  has  hitherto,  as  a  habit,  preferred  to 
write  or  to  lecture  on  a  tacit  assumption  that  humanity 
showed  upward  progress,  even  when  it  emphatically 
showed  the  contrary,  as  was  not  uncommon;  but  this 
passive  attitude  cannot  be  held  against  the  physicist  who 
invades  his  territory  and  takes  the  teaching  of  history 
out  of  his  hands.  Somewhere  he  will  have  to  make  a 
stand,  but  he  has  been  already  so  much  weakened  by  the 
surrender  of  his  defences  that  he  knows  no  longer  where 
a  stand  can  be  made.  As  a  form  of  Vital  Energy  he  is 
convicted  of  being  a  Vertebrate,  a  Mammal,  a  Mono- 
delphe,  a  Primate,  and  must  eternally,  by  his  body,  be 
subject  to  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics.  Escape 
there  is  impossible.  Science  has  shut  and  barred  every 
known  exit.  Man  can  detect  no  outlet  except  through 
the  loophole  called  Mind,  and  even  to  avail  himself  of 
this,  he  must  follow  Lapparent's  advice,  —  become  a  dis- 
embodied spirit  and  seek  a  confederate  among  such 
physicists  or  physiologists  as  are  willing  to  admit  that 
man,  as  an  animal,  has  no  importance ;  that  his  evolution 
or  degradation  as  an  organism  is  inunaterial;   that  his 


192    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

physical  force  or  condition  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
subject ;  that  the  old  ascetics  were  correct  in  suppressing 
the  body;  and  that  his  consciousness  is  sufficient  proof 
of  his  right  to  regard  Reason  as  the  highest  potential  of 
Vital  Energy. 

The  historian,  thrown  back  on  this  oldest  of  battle- 
grounds, may  console  himself  with  the  thought  that  the 
physicists  and  physiologists  are  as  much  embarrassed  as 
himself;  but  while,  in  former  ages,  the  world  went  on, 
after  a  fashion,  trusting  to  the  energy  of  its  archaic 
instincts  to  make  good  the  lapses  of  its  reasoning  powers, 
the  external  pressure  of  physical  forces,  under  their 
thermodynamic  laws,  seems  of  late  to  have  literally  driven 
physical  science  into  an  assumption  of  universal  authority, 
so  that  physiologists  can  no  longer  evade  the  logical 
necessity  of  framing  a  stem-history  for  the  mind,  as  for 
the  body  or  the  skeleton;  and  since  their  law  tends 
strongly  towards  monism,  —  unity  of  energy,  —  they 
cannot  supply  man  with  any  other  energies  or  laws  than 
he  inherited  from  his  only  known  —  or  unknown  — 
ancestor,  the  hypothetical  eocene  lemur.  In  the  system 
of  Energetik,  Reason  can  be  only  another  phase  of  the 
energy  earlier  known  as  Instinct  or  Intuition ;  and  if  this 
be  admitted  as  the  stem-history  of  the  Mind  as  far  back  as 
the  eocene  lemur,  it  must  be  admitted  for  all  forms  of 


THE  PROBLEM  193 

Vital  Energy  back  to  the  vegetables  and  perhaps  even 
to  the  crystals.  In  the  absence  of  any  definite  break  in 
the  series,  all  must  be  treated  as  endowed  with  energy 
equivalent  to  will. 

The  idea  is  very  familiar  in  philosophy;  the  strange- 
ness consists  in  its  gaining  foothold  in  science.  At  the 
Congress  of  the  ItaUan  Society  for  the  Progress  of  Sciences 
held  at  Parma  in  1907,  Ciamician,  the  distinguished 
Professor  of  the  University  of  Bologna,  suggested  that 
the  potential  of  Vital  Energy  should  be  taken  as  the 
Will.  The  step  seems  logical,  and  to  the  historian  it 
seems  natural.  The  idea  is  as  old  as  Aristotle ;  any  one 
who  cares  to  study  its  history  will  find  it  in  Eduard  von 
Hartmann's  "Philosophie  des  Unbewussten"  (Vol.  ii, 
pp.  426^39,  Leipzig,  1904) ;  but,  for  the  actual  uses  of 
to-day,  the  story  goes  back  no  further  than  to  Schopen- 
hauer's famous  work,  ''Die  Welt  als  Wille,"  which  ap- 
peared in  1819-1844.  Schopenhauer  held  that  all  energy 
in  natiu-e,  latent,  or  active,  is  identical  with  Will.  Before 
his  time,  —  he  claimed,  —  the  concept  of  Will  was  in- 
cluded in  the  concept  of  Force;  he  reversed  the  order 
on  the  ground  that  the  unknown  should  be  referred  to 
the  known,  and  that  therefore  the  whole  universe  of 
energy,  known  or  unknown,  of  whatever  intensity  or 
volume,  should  be  brought  into  the  category  of  intuition. 


194    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  philosophers,  even  when  rejecting  the  identity  of 
Will  with  Energy,  were  before  long  busily  coquetting 
with  the  idea,  which  offered  extraordinary  charms  to 
inventors  of  systems.  For  the  historian,  Schopenhauer's 
method  had  the  double  merit  of  logically  merging  the 
two  great  historical  schools  of  thought.  The  old  idea 
of  Form,  which  ruled  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  and 
Thomas  Aquinas,  shpped  readily  over  the  idea  of  Energy, 
taught  by  Kelvin  and  Clausius,  so  that  henceforward  it 
mattered  little  whether  the  schools,  in  their  rage  for 
nomenclature,  called  the  result  ''Will,"  or  "Entelechy," 
or  "Dominant,"  or  "Organic  Principle,"  or  "Trieb,"  or 
"Strebung,"  or  "Intuition,"  or  "Instinct,"  or  just  simply 
"Force"  as  of  old;  even  the  forbidden  words  "Creative 
power"  became  almost  orthodox  science;  in  any  case 
the  logic  of  "Will"  or  "Energetik"  imperatively  required 
that  every  conception  whatever,  involving  a  potential, 
obliged  ontologists  to  regard  the  will-power  of  every 
stem  as  the  source  of  variation  in  the  branches,  and  to 
admit,  as  a  physical  necessity,  that  the  branch  which  has 
lost  the  power  of  variation  should  be  regarded  as  an  ex- 
ample of  enfeebled  energy  falling  under  the  second  law 
of  thermodynamics. 

Such  an  arrangement,  however  convenient  for  degra- 
dationists,  and  however  tempting  to  students  of  palaeon- 


THE  PROBLEM  196 

tology  in  particular,  is  likely  to  bring  trouble  on  other 
branches  of  education.  Especially  for  human  history 
its  bearings  are  painfully  pointed.  Already  the  an- 
thropologists have  admitted  man  to  be  specialized  beyond 
the  hope  of  further  variation,  so  that,  as  an  energy,  he 
must  be  treated  as  a  weakened  Will,  —  an  enfeebled 
vitality,  —  a  degraded  potential.  He  cannot  himself 
deny  that  his  highest  Will-power,  whether  individual  or 
social,  must  have  proved  itself  by  his  highest  variation, 
which  was  incontrovertibly  his  act  of  transforming  him- 
self from  a  hypothetical  eocene  lemur,  —  whatever  such 
a  creature  may  have  been,  —  into  a  man  speaking  an 
elaborately  inflected  language.  This  staggering  but  self- 
evident  certainty  requires  many  phases  of  weakening 
Will-power  to  intervene  in  the  process  of  subsidence  into 
the  reflective,  hesitating,  relatively  passive  stage  called 
Reason ;  so  that  in  the  end,  if  the  biologists  insist  on  im- 
posing their  law  on  the  anthropologists,  while  at  the  same 
time  refusing  to  admit  a  break  in  the  series,  the  historian 
will  have  to  define  his  profession  as  the  science  of  human 
degradation.  The  law  of  thermodynamics  must  embrace  ' 
human  history  in  its  last  as  well  as  in  its  earliest  phase. 
If  the  physicist  can  suggest  any  plausible  way  of  escap- 
ing this  demonstration,  either  logically  or  by  mathe- 
matics, he  will  confer  a  great  benefit  on  history;    but, 


196    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

pending  his  decision,  if  the  highest  Will-power  is  con- 
ceded to  have  existed  first,  and  if  the  physicist  is  to  be 
granted  his  postulate  that  height  and  intensity  are  equiva- 
lent terms,  while  fall  and  diffusion  are  equivalent  to 
degradation,  then  the  intenser  energy  of  Will  which 
showed  itself  in  the  primitive  extravagance  of  variation 
for  which  Darwin  tried  so  painfully  to  account  by  uni- 
formitarian  formulas,  must  have  been  —  and  must  be 
now  in  the  constant  process  of  being  —  degraded  and 
lost,  and  can  never  be  recovered.  The  process,  in  physics, 
is  not  reversible. 

If  the  historian  of  human  society  is  to  let  himself  be 
placed  in  this  position,  the  fact  should  be  understood  and 
accepted  in  advance.  In  that  case,  two  schools  of  history 
can  be  easily  organized ;  but  the  effect  on  other  branches 
of  instruction  is  not  so  simple.  Ciamician's  suggestion, 
—  like  Schopenhauer's,  Uke  Nietzsche's,  like  Eduard  von 
Hartmann's  philosophy,  —  does,  no  doubt,  threaten 
human  history  with  fantastic  revolution,  but  perhaps  its 
strangest  result  is  that  of  converting  metaphysics  into  a 
branch  of  physics.  Nothing  in  the  history  of  philosophy 
is  more  distinctly  marked  than  the  effort  of  physics  and 
metaphysics,  since  1890,  to  approach  each  other.  Only 
a  specialist  knows  even  the  titles  of  the  books  on  this 
subject,  in  the  German  language  alone;   but  a  beginner 


THE  PROBLEM  197 

might  perhaps  try  to  get  an  idea  of  the  process  from 
Wilhelm  Wundt's  well-known  ''System  der  Philosophic" 
(Leipzig,  1897).  The  naturalist  now  readily  admits  that 
plants  have  souls  —  or  will-power,  —  but  he  appropriates 
the  soul  as  an  energy  of  thermodynamics.  At  first  sight, 
the  tendency  seems  towards  metaphysics,  but  the  true 
current  is  the  reverse.  The  chaos  is  more  chaotic  than 
ever,  but  the  effort  to  make  the  laws  of  Energetik  cover 
all,  is  perhaps  the  only  very  vigorous  intellectual  activity 
now  in  evidence. 

Both  parties  have  in  consequence  appealed  to  the 
Psychologists,  and,  under  the  lead  of  Ostwald  in  Ger- 
many and  of  Loeb  in  America,  have  created,  within  the 
last  few  years,  a  new  literature  so  extensive  as  to  defy 
all  students  except  advanced  specialists.  Indeed,  almost 
as  in  mathematics,  the  specialist  himself  is  rarely  equal 
to  his  task.  Every  country  in  the  world  is  contributing 
to  the  pursuit  of  psychological  laws.  In  Russia,  Krain- 
sky's  volume  on  the  "Law  of  Conservation  of  Energy 
applied  to  Psychical  Activity"  appeared  as  long  ago  as 
the  year  1897.  The  amount  of  intelligence  and  patient 
research  put  into  the  investigation  is  as  great  as  though 
wealth  were  its  'end ;  and,  though  the  drift  of  evidence 
may  seem  to  a  historian  both  clear  and  strong,  he  has,  as 
yet,  no  right  to  hamper  the  inquiry  by  inflicting  on  these 


198    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

exceedingly  clever  and  earnest  seekers  any  inquiries  of 
his  own.  At  most,  in  his  desperate  search  for  allies  to 
protect  him  from  the  tyranny  of  thermodynamics,  he 
might  timidly  ask,  not  them  but  himself,  whether  the 
new  psychology  tends  towards  the  possibiUty  that  Reason 
may  be  a  more  or  less  remote  consequence  of  Tropism,  — 
that  is  to  say,  a  form  of  motion  excited  by  exterior  forces. 
In  itself,  this  old  and  very  familiar  theory,  that  ''nous 
vivons  parce  que  nous  sommes  excites,"  is  as  indifferent 
to  sociologists  as  any  other  physico-chemical  or  me- 
chanical analogy  used  for  purposes  of  technical  instruc- 
tion; but  if  it  goes  to  the  point  of  asserting,  as  an  ac- 
quired truth,  that  the  motion  of  the  mind  is  an  induced 
motion  which  follows  the  laws  of  electricity,  the  historian 
of  mind  in  its  social  variety  will  find  himself  seriously 
embarrassed.  Without  going  back  to  the  earlier  dis- 
cussion of  this  burning  question,  an  inquirer  may  allow 
himself  to  quote  the  latest  form  in  which  the  distinguished 
chief  of  the  school  states  it.  Ostwald  says :  —  "Between 
psychological  and  mechanical  operations,  there  seems  to 
be  nearly  the  same  difference  and  the  same  resemblance,  as 
between  electric  and  chemical  operations"  (''L'Ener- 
gie."  Paris,  1910,  p.  210).  On  this  question,  Loeb  is 
even  a  higher  authority  than  Ostwald,  and  his  latest 
expressions  are  still  more  emphatic.    He  recognizes  no 


THE  PROBLEM  199 

such  thing  as  Will :  —  "It  seems  to  me,"  he  says,  "that 
it  is  in  the  interest  of  psychology  itself  to  favor  the  develop- 
ment of  the  theory  of  tropisms";  and  not  of  tropisms 
alone;  —  "My  object  is  to  refer  psychical  phenomena 
not  only  to  tropisms  but  also  to  physico-chemical  phe- 
nomena" ("La  Revue  des  Id^es,"  October  15,  1909). 
With  the  utmost  ingenuity  and  labor  he  has  proved  that, 
at  least  in  many  low  organisms,  what  is  taken  for  Will 
is  really  mechanical  attraction. 

Loeb's  demonstrations  are  quite  beautiful  pieces  of 
work  which  rouse  high  admiration  for  his  powers;  but 
their  bearing  on  his  colleagues  is  obscure.  If  Thought  is 
capable  of  being  classed  with  Electricity,  or  Will  with 
chemical  affinity,  as  a  mode  of  motion,  it  seems  neces- 
sarily to  fall  at  once  under  the  second  law  of  thermo- 
dynamics as  one  of  the  energies  which  most  easily  de- 
grades itself,  and,  if  not  carefully  guarded,  returns  bodily 
to  the  cheaper  form  called  Heat.  Of  all  possible  theories, 
this  is  Hkely  to  prove  the  most  fatal  to  Professors  of 
History. 

The  dilemma  is  pointed  out  by  Dr.  Hanna  Thomson, 
in  his  book  on  the  Brain,  with  the  emphasis  that  suits 
its  tension:  —  "Physically  the  gap  between  the  brain  of 
man  and  the  brain  of  an  anthropoid  ape  is  too  insig- 
nificant to  count;   but  their  difference  as  beings  corre- 


200  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

spends  to  the  distance  of  the  earth  from  the  nearest  fixed 
star.  The  brain  of  man  does  not  account .  for  man  ? 
What  does?" 

The  question,  thus  bluntly  posed,  is  bluntly  answered 
in  a  sense  hostile  to  the  physicist  law.  The  brain  is  de- 
veloped by  the  Will,  which  lies  within  and  behind  the 
brain:  —  "By  practice  .  .  .  the  Will-stimulus  will  not 
only  organize  brain-centres  to  perform  new  functions,  but 
will  project  new  connecting,  —  or,  as  they  are  technically 
called,  association  —  fibres,  which  will  make  nerve- 
centres  work  together  as  they  could  not,  without  being 
thus  associated."  The  motive-power  is  not  of  the  brain, 
"because  it  is  the  masterful  personal  Will  which  makes 
the  brain  human"  by  developing  one  of  the  brain-hemi- 
spheres; and  "this  Something  known  as  Will,"  continues 
Dr.  Hanna  Thomson,  "is  not  natural,  but  supernatural, 
both  in  its  powers  and  in  its  creations." 

Of  course  the  supernatural  character  of  the  Will  is  the 
whole  point  in  dispute,  and  the  usual  doctrine  of  the 
modern  psychologist  substitutes  the  word  Nature  for 
the  word  Supernatural.  Thus  Paul  Flechsig,  concluding 
his  address  to  the  Psychological  Congress  in  Rome  (1905), 
says  that  "only  by  constant,  progressive  changes  in  the 
physical  form  of  the  brain,  has  Nature  succeeded  in  at- 
taining this  truly  lofty  end.    Thus  the  Will  shows  organic 


THE  PROBLEM  201 

evolution  from  first  to  last,  and  shows  in  this  respect  no 
difference  from  other  bodily  functions.  It  is  a  product 
of  organic  nature,  and,  at  least  in  its  broadest  sense,  bears 
that  stamp." 

The  three  views  seem  far  apart,  and  yet  one  can  con- 
ceive that  Kelvin,  who  troubled  himself  only  with  the 
practical  means  of  obtaining  a  fall  of  potential  equivalent 
to  the  work  done,  might  have  seen  no  necessary  contra- 
diction to  his  law  in  either  case :  — 

"Quite  so!"  he  might  be  supposed  to  reply;  "the 
force  that  Thomson  calls  supernatural  Will,  and  Flechsig 
calls  an  organic  function,  and  Loeb  calls  a  physico- 
chemical  relation,  is  the  force  which  I  call  vital  Energy, 
and  which  I  agree  with  Dr.  Thomson  in  regarding  as 
supernatural  in  the  sense  that  nature  no  longer  produces 
it  here,  more  than  she  produces  any  other  element  or  atom. 
Physicists  are  at  perfect  Hberty  to  regard  the  Will  as 
another  name  for  the  same  primitive,  elementary,  im- 
explained  energy  which  gave  odor  to  a  molecule  of  copper, 
or  made  the  magnolia  burst  into  flower  with  more  than 
animal  sensuaUty  and  perfection  of  form,  color,  scent, 
and  line;  or  the  caterpillar  suddenly  soar  into  the  air 
with  the  amazing,  inconceivable  sensual  properties  of 
the  butterfly;  but  the  mere  brain-mechanism  you  talk 
about  is,  in  physics,  far  less  extraordinary,  as  Will,  than 


202  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

what  went  before  it,  —  creations  always  growing  higher 
in  tension  as  you  go  backward,  —  Hke  the  eye,  or  the 
innumerable  varieties  or  transformations  of  the  shapes 
which  vital  energy  has  taken  in  every  province  of  the 
vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  while  all  are  still  sub- 
ordinate and  even  trivial  when  compared  with  the 
primary  creation  of  energy  itself,  about  which  no  one 
knows  anything  except  its  name,  —  Nature." 

The  professor  of  physics  will  be  shocked  at  seeing  such 
words  put  into  Kelvin's  mouth.  In  that  case  Kelvin's 
own  words  will  answer  almost  equally  well:  ''Science 
positively  affirms  creative  power.  .  .  .  Modern  biol- 
ogists are  coming  once  more  to  a  firm  acceptance  of 
something  beyond  mere  gravitational,  chemical,  and 
physical  forces ;  and  that  unknown  thing  is  a  vital  prin- 
ciple. .  .  .  We  are  absolutely  forced  by  science  to  admit 
and  to  believe  with  absolute  confidence  in  a  directive 
power.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  between  absolute  scien- 
tific behef  in  creative  power,  and  the  acceptance  of  the 
theory  of  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms.  Just  think 
of  a  number  of  atoms  falling  together  of  their  own  ac- 
cord, and  making  a  crystal,  a  sprig  of  moss,  a  microbe,  a 
living  animal!"     (Life,  1098.) 

Such  reasoning  in  circles  helps  the  historian  httle  to 
make  headway  against  the  current  of  physical  energies. 


THE  PROBLEM  203 

His  dilemma  remains  imtouched.  The  physicist  says 
that  Thought  is  an  organic  growth  which  has  the  faculty 
of  deternuning  its  own  action  within  certain  limits,  but 
whose  ''Freedom"  exists  only  in  the  atmosphere  of  ideals. 
By  the  majority  of  physiologists,  Thought  seems  to  be 
regarded  —  at  present  —  as  a  more  or  less  degraded 
Act,  —  an  enfeebled  function  of  Will :  — 

''Thought  comes  as  the  result  of  helplessness,"  says 
Lalande  in  his  volume  on  "Dissolution"  (Paris,  1899. 
p.  166) ;  "Thought,  as  Bain  says,  is  the  refraining  from 
speech  or  action.  The  truth  is,  therefore,  that  action 
comes  first ;  the  idea  is  an  act  which  tends  to  accomphsh 
itself,  and  which,  when  stopped  by  some  obstacle  before 
its  realization,  finds  a  new  form  of  reality  in  that  stoppage. 
Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  said :  '  The  man  who  thinks  is 
a  depraved  animal ' ;  and  in  this  he  expressed  an  exact 
view  of  psychology.  As  far  as  he  is  animal,  the  thinker 
is  a  bad  animal;  eating  badly;  digesting  badly;  often 
dying  without  posterity.  In  him  the  degradation  of  vital 
energy  is  flagrant.  (La  depravation  de  la  nature 
physique  est  visible  chez  lui.)" 

The  late  volume  of  M.  Bergson,  "L'Evolution  Cr^- 
trice,"  is  the  most  widely  known  among  the  very  latest 
efforts  of  metaphysicians  to  defend  their  conceptions 
against  the  methods  of  physics ;  and  yet,  on  this  point  of 


204    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Reason  and  Instinct,  M.  Bergson  seems  ready  to  go  further 
than  M.  Lalande.  The  whole  chapter  on  Instinct  ought 
to  be  read,  and  studied  in  connection  with  the  treatment 
of  the  same  subject  by  Reinke,  in  his  ''Einleitung" 
(Kap.  21),  and  the  source  of  it  all  in  Eduard  von  Hart- 
mann's  ''Unbewusste;"  but  a  few  paragraphs  will  serve 
to  express  the  present  views  of  the  College  de  France 
about  the  relative  value  of  phases  of  life  as  forces :  — 

"From  our  point  of  view,  hfe  appears  globally  as  an 
immense  wave  which  starts  from  a  centre  to  propagate 
itself  outwards,  and  which  is  arrested  at  almost  every 
point  of  its  circumference,  and  is  converted  into  oscillation 
without  advance;  at  one  point  alone,  it  has  forced  the 
obstacle,  and  the  impulse  has  passed  on  freely.  This 
liberty  is  registered  in  the  form  of  man.  Everywhere 
except  with  man,  consciousness  has  been  brought  to  a 
stop ;  with  man  alone  it  has  pursued  its  road.  ...  In 
doing  so,  it  is  true,  it  has  abandoned  not  merely  the 
baggage  that  embarrassed  it,  but  has  been  obliged  to 
renounce  also  some  precious  properties.  Consciousness, 
in  man,  is  chiefly  intelligence.  It  might  have  been,  — 
it  seems  as  though  it  ought  to  have  been,  —  intuition 
too.  .  .  .  Another  evolution  might  have  led  to  a  hu- 
manity either  still  more  intelligent,  or  more  intuitive. 
In  reality,  in  the  humanity  of  which  we  make  part,  intu- 


THE  PROBLEM  205 

ition  is  almost  completely  sacrificed  to  intelligence.  .  .  . 
Intuition  is  still  there,  but  vague,  and  especially  discon- 
tinuous. It  is  a  lamp,  almost  extinguished,  which  gains 
strength  at  long  intervals,  where  a  vital  interest  is  at 
hazard,  but  only  for  a  few  instants.  On  our  personality, 
on  our  Uberty,  on  the  place  we  occupy  in  nature  as  a 
whole,  on  our  origin,  and  perhaps  also  on  our  destiny  it 
casts  a  feeble  and  flickering  light,  but  a  Hght  which  pierces, 
none  the  less,  the  darkness  of  the  night  in  which  our  in- 
telhgence  leaves  us"  (pp.  288-289). 

If  this  is  the  best  that  physiology  and  metaphysics  can 
do  to  help  the  historian  of  man,  the  outlook  is  far  from 
cheerful.  The  historian  is  required  either  expressly  to 
assert,  or  surreptitiously  to  assume,  before  his  students, 
that  the  whole  function  of  nature  has  been  the  ultimate 
production  of  this  one-sided  Consciousness,  —  this  ampu- 
tated Intelligence,  —  this  degraded  Act,  —  this  trun- 
cated Will.  As  the  function  of  the  crystal  is  to  produce 
the  order  of  its  cleavage,  and  that  of  the  rose,  the  beauty 
of  its  flower,  and  that  of  the  peacock,  the  splendors  of 
its  tail,  and  as,  except  for  these  purposes,  neither  crystal, 
rose  nor  peacock  has  as  much  human  interest  as  a  thistle 
or  a  maggot,  so  the  function  of  man  is,  to  the  historian, 
the  production  of  Thought ;  but  if  all  the  other  sciences 
affirm  that  not  Thought  but  Instinct  is  the  potential  of 


206  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Vital  Energy,  and  if  the  beauties  of  Thought  —  shown 
in  the  intuitions  of  artistic  genius,  —  are  to  be  taken  for 
the  last  traces  of  an  instinct  now  wholly  dead  or  dying, 
nothing  remains  for  the  historian  to  describe  or  develop 
except  the  history  of  a  more  or  less  mechanical  dissolu- 
tion. The  mere  act  of  reproduction,  which  seems  to 
have  been  the  most  absorbing  and  passionate  purpose 
of  primitive  instinct,  concerns  history  not  at  all,  except 
as  the  botanist  is  concerned  with  the  question  whether 
the  flower  is  a  developed  or  degraded  leaf ;  but  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  plant  exists  to  produce  the  flower,  or  to 
produce  the  leaf,  is  vital.  The  University,  as  distinct 
from  the  technological  school,  has  no  proper  function 
other  than  to  teach  that  the  flower  of  vital  energy  is 
Thought,  and  that  not  Instinct  but  Intellect  is  the  highest 
power  of  a  supernatural  Will ;  —  an  ultimate,  independent, 
self-producing,  self-sustaining,  incorruptible  solvent  of  all 
earlier  or  lower  energies,  and  incapable  of  degradation  or 
dissolution. 

Intellect  should  bear  the  same  relation  to  Instinct  that 
the  sun  bears  to  a  gaseous  nebula,  and  hitherto  in  human 
history  it  has  asserted  this  relation  without  a  doubt  of 
its  self-evident  truth.  The  assertion  has  led  to  physical 
violence  and  intellectual  extravagance  without  hmit,  so 
that  history  shows  man  as  alternately  insane  with  his 


THE  PROBLEM  207 

own  pride  of  intellect,  and  shuddering  with  horror  at 
its  bloody  consequences;  but  the  remains  of  primitive 
instinct  taught  society  that  it  could  not  abandon  its 
claim  to  be,  or  to  represent,  a  supernatural  and  inde- 
pendent energy,  without,  by  the  same  act,  admitting 
and  demonstrating  its  progressive  enfeeblement  of  will. 
If  Intellect  led  to  such  an  abdication,  it  proved  the  uni- 
versal truth  of  the  second  thermodynamic  law. 

From  the  beginnings  of  philosophy  and  reUgion,  the 
thinker  was  taught  by  the  mere  act  of  thinking,  to  take 
for  granted  that  his  mind  was  the  highest  energy  of  nature. 
Society  still  believes  it,  and  asserts  its  supremacy,  on  no 
other  ground,  with  a  sustained  force  which  is  the  chief 
theme  of  history,  and  which  showed  no  sign  of  relaxation 
until  attacked  in  the  eighteenth  century  in  its  theological 
or  supernatural  outposts.  Society  must  still  continue 
to  act  upon  it,  as  the  Platonist,  the  Stoic  and  the  Christian 
did,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  it  was  and  is  their  only 
motive  for  existence,  —  their  solitary  title  to  their  identity. 

History  has  never  regarded  itself  as  a  science  of  sta- 
tistics. It  was  the  Science  of  Vital  Energy  in  relation 
with  time;  and  of  late  this  radiating  centre  of  its  life 
has  been  steadily  tending,  —  together  with  every  form 
of  physical  and  mechanical  energy,  —  towards  mathe- 
matical expression.    The  torrent  of  physical  energy  has 


208    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

swept  society  into  its  course,  until  every  school,  and  al- 
most every  teacher  in  the  world,  —  except  perhaps  in 
the  Church,  —  takes  an  attitude  of  instinctive  and  silent 
hostility  ib  any  form  of  energy  that  claims  to  be  inde- 
pendent. Even  though  the  triumph  of  this  teaching 
is  the  ultimate  degradation  of  the  energy  that  is  taught,  — 
of  the  teacher  as  well  as  of  the  pupil  and  the  universe,  — 
and  the  more  complete  his  victory,  the  more  rapid  his 
degradation,  the  fault  is  not  his  that  the  radiating  centre 
of  his  world  should  betray  this  visible  decline  of  vigor. 

Very  unwillingly  can  he  admit  Reason  to  be  an  energy 
at  all ;  at  the  utmost,  he  can  hardly  allow  it  to  be  more 
than  a  passive  instrument  of  a  physico-chemical  energy 
called  Will ;  —  an  ingenious  economy  in  the  application 
of  power ;  a  catalytic  medium ;  a  dynamo,  mysteriously 
converting  one  form  of  energy  into  a  lower ;  —  but  if 
persuaded  to  concede  the  intrinsic  force  of  Reason,  he 
must  still  reject  its  independence.  As  a  force  it  must 
obey  the  laws  of  force ;  as  an  energy  it  must  content  itself 
with  such  freedom  as  the  laws  of  energy  allow;  and  in 
any  case  it  must  submit  to  the  final  and  fundamental 
necessity  of  Degradation. 

The  same  law,  by  still  stronger  reasoning,  appUes  to 
the  Will  itself. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Solutions 

THE  general  reader,  though  apt  to  mistake  the  drift 
of  thought,  is  still  rather  a  better  judge  of  it  than 
the  speciaUst  can  be,  and  he  gets,  from  the  Uterature  of 
the  twentieth  century  in  its  first  decade,  a  decided  im- 
pression that  educational  energy  has  passed  into  the 
hands  of  the  physico-chemists  and  teachers  of  Energetik 
or  thermodynamics.  The  old  Law  of  Conservation,  or 
mechanics,  still  rules  in  the  workshop,  but  is  somewhat 
lifeless  in  the  scholars  if  not  in  the  schools.  Its  teachers 
seem  rather  inactive,  or  even  indifferent;  yet  possibly, 
here  and  there,  one  of  them  may  feel  uneasy  at  the 
prospect  of  actually  coming  to  blows  with  his  brother- 
professors  as  in  the  old  days  of  rehgion.  The  Law  of  Con- 
servation was  an  easy  one ;  it  left  a  reasonable  share  of 
freedom  in  the  universe ;  even  astronomers  were  allowed 
to  be  devout,  and  sometimes  actually  were  so ;  while  in 
strictness,  physicists  cease  to  be  physicists  unless  they 
hold  that  the  law  of  Entropy  includes  Gods  and  men  as 
well  as  universes.  Nevertheless  even  a  physicist  may 
P  209 


210  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

occasionally  bear  in  patience  with  perfectly  impartial, 
and,  though  conservative,  yet  not  uns3m[ipathetic  by- 
standers, who  try  to  act  as  though  the  door  were  still 
open,  and  who  beg  only  to  be  told  what  the  new  physicists 
are  wilUng  to  do  for  mankind.  What  mankind  will  do  for 
itself  is  quite  another  matter,  since  probably  all  teachers 
admit  that,  in  daily  life,  society  may  go  on  indefinitely, 
quite  as  well,  —  or  as  ill,  —  in  the  future  as  in  the  past ; 
but  as  between  schools  of  education  the  divergence  is 
wide.  Possibly  the  Universities  may  think  it  safer  to 
ignore  the  dilemma  for  another  decade  or  two,  as  they 
have  ignored  so  many  others ;  but  they  would  do  better 
to  reach  an  understanding  if  they  can,  especially  because, 
if  both  parties  could  be  brought  into  some  slight  sacrifice 
of  principle,  and  so  abate  the  rigor  of  their  law,  the 
compromise  might  put  new  Ufe  into  the  school  of  history, 
which  badly  needs  it. 

For  purposes  of  teaching,  the  figure  is  alone  essential, 
and  the  figure  of  Rise  and  Fall  has  done  infinite  harm 
from  the  beginnings  of  thought.  That  of  Expansion  and 
Contraction  is  far  more  scientific,  even  in  history.  Evolu- 
tion, again,  is  troublesome,  and  has  already  yielded  to 
the  less  compromising  figure  of  Transformation.  Expan- 
sion and  Transformation  are  words  which  commit  teachers 
to  no  inconvenient  dogma;  indeed,  they  are  so  happily 


THE  SOLUTIONS  211 

adapted  for  Galileos  who  are  wise  enough  not  to  shock 
opinion,  that  they  seem  to  impose  themselves  on  the 
lecture-room.     In  strictness,  no  doubt,  water  which  falls 
and    dynamite    which    expands,    are    equally    degraded 
energies,  but  the  mind  is  repelled  by  the  idea  of  deg- 
radation, while  it  is  pleased  by  the  figure  of  expansion. 
Because  an  energy  is  diffused  hke  table-salt  in  water,  it 
is  not  rendered  less  useful ;   on  the  contrary,  it  can  only 
by  that  process  be  made  useful  at  all  to  an  animal  hke 
man  whose  hf e  is  shut  within  narrow  limits  of  intensity ; 
who  sends  for  a  physician  if  his  temperature  rises  a 
single  degree,  and  who  dies  if  it  rises  or  falls  5°  Centi- 
grade;   whose  bath  must  be  tempered  and  his  alcohol 
diluted;    and  whose  highest  ambition  is  to  train  and 
temper  his  own  brute  energies  to  obey  law.     Notoriously 
civihzation    and    education    enfeeble    personal    energy; 
emollit  mores :  they  aim  especially  at  extending  the  forces 
of  society  at  cost  of  the  intensity  of  individual  forces. 
"Thou  shalt  not,"  is  the  beginning  of  law.     The  in- 
dividual, like  the  crystal  of  salt,  is  absorbed  in  the  solution, 
but  the  solution  does  work  which  the  individual  could  not 
do. 

Put  in  this  form  the  law  of  thermodynamics  seems  less 
obnoxious.  With  the  change  of  one  word  to  another, 
the  most  sensitive  evolutionist  might  not  refuse  a  hearing 


212    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  the  physicist  who  should  affirm  that  organic  as  well 
as  inorganic  nature  shows  a  universal  tendency  to  the 
dissipation  of  energy.  At  the  utmost,  the  Evolutionist 
would  need  only  to  point  out  that  nature,  contrary  to  her 
usually  wasteful  habits,  often  teaches  extreme  economy, 
as  when  she  locks  up  her  energies  in  atoms  and  molecules, 
or,  what  is  more  to  man's  purpose,  when  she  trains  the 
glow-worm  to  habits  of  costless  industry  that  may  well 
make  the  sun  veil  its  face ;  but,  consenting  to  pass  over, 
for  the  moment,  this  restriction  on  thermodynamic 
extravagance,  the  Darwinian  will  perhaps  for  the  sake 
of  harmony,  concede  that,  however  economical  the  process 
may  be  in  its  details,  dissipation  of  energy  is  always 
occurring  in  the  mass,  and  that  nature  shows  no  known 
machinery  for  restoring  the  energy  which  she  dissipates. 
If  the  physiologists  insist  on  this  concession,  the  Dar- 
winian may  perhaps,  by  way  of  reaching  an  issue,  content 
himself  with  allowing  it,  with  only  a  single,  but  serious, 
restriction. 

This  single  restriction  concerns  the  limitations  of  sci- 
ence itself,  which  has  thus  far  penetrated  only  the  grosser 
operations  of  nature,  and  cannot  deny  that  further 
knowledge  may  —  and  probably  will  —  overthrow  much 
of  the  experience  of  physics.  This  possibility  is  constantly 
discussed  by  the  most  eminent  physicists,  and  is  open  to 


THE  SOLUTIOKfS  213 

endless  discussion  by  physiologists;  but  since  it  is  the 
last  ground  on  which  the  Darwinian  can  make  a  stand,  he 
will  do  well  to  reserve  it,  on  the  chance  that  new  scientific 
horizons  will  open  to  him. 

Supposing,  then,  that  the  physicist  takes  the  lead,  and 
seeks  for  a  means  of  compromise,  —  some  middle  term, 
on  which  the  elevationist  can  stand  while  discussing  the 
details  of  a  treaty !  The  degradationist  can  produce 
from  his  stores  of  energy  a  number  of  figures  for  choice ; 
—  such  as  that  of  water,  which  expands  or  contracts, 
according  to  the  temperature,  or  falls  according  to  its 
position;  or  electricity,  which  dissipates  itself  in  work; 
or  of  dynamite,  which  does  work  by  explosion ;  or  of  gases, 
which  work  restlessly  without  accompUshing  anything; 
or  of  table-salt,  which  dissolves  mysteriously  in  water,  to 
help  digestion  or  stimulate  appetite ;  but  possibly  he  may 
begin  with  his  favorite  figure  of  a  gaseous  nebula,  and  may 
offer  to  treat  primitive  humanity  as  a  volume  of  human 
molecules  of  unequal  intensities,  tending  to  dissipate  en- 
ergy, and  to  correct  the  loss  by  concentrating  mankind 
into  a  single,  dense  mass  like  the  sun.  History  would  then 
become  a  record  of  successive  phases  of  contraction, 
divided  by  periods  of  explosion,  tending  always  towards  an 
ultimate  equiUbrium  in  the  form  of  a  volume  of  human 
molecules  of  equal  intensity,  without  coordination. 


214  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

If  this  analogy,  with  its  law  of  phases,  should  be  re- 
jected, the  physicist  might  still  offer  a  number  of  others, 
likening  social  energy  to  light,  heat,  electricity,  or  radiating 
matter ;  —  in  short  to  any  form  of  physical  energy, 
provided  it  obeyed  his  second  law  of  thermodynamics,  by 
dissipating  itself  beyond  recovery ;  but,  with  the  utmost 
good-will,  the  evolutionist  will  find  himself  much  em- 
barrassed to  accept  any  of  these  offers.  If  he  is  to  remain 
evolutionist,  —  and  he  has  no  other  motive  for  existence, 
—  he  is  forced  to  assert,  as  his  most  modest  claim,  the 
concession  of  two  points :  —  1.  That  organic  life  has  the 
exclusive  power  of  economizing  nature's  waste.  —  2. 
That  man  alone  enjoys  the  supernatural  power  of  con- 
sciously reversing  nature's  process,  by  raising  her  dissi- 
pated energies,  including  his  own,  to  higher  intensities. 
That  is  to  say,  man  must  possess  the  exclusive  power  of 
reversing  the  process  of  extinction  inherent  in  other 
activities  of  nature.  The  mere  conservation  of  energy 
would  not  be  enough  for  him,  whatever  it  is  for  the  glow- 
worm. 

The  physicist  cannot  for  a  moment  be  expected  to  grant 
either  of  these  demands,  and  is  quite  hkely  to  be  irritated 
by  them  even  to  the  point  of  flatly  denying  any  exclusive 
privileges  to  organic  life  except  in  its  processes.  He  is 
capable  of  going  on  to  question  the  value  of  the  processes 


THE  SOLUTIONS  215 

too,  especially  on  the  point  of  economy,  and  of  asserting 
that  organisms  are  bad  economists  compared  with  in- 
organic matter.  He  will  readily  admit  that  some  of  the 
lower  forms  of  life  are  economists :  —  the  honey-bee,  for 
example ;  and  some  caterpillars  which  store  silk,  and  the 
coral  polyp  which  stores  hme,  and  so  forth ;  but  the  vege- 
tables do  much  better,  with  their  starch  and  chlorophyl 
and  carbon,  while  the  ocean  and  the  atmosphere  do  better 
still  by  storing  heat  on  an  enormous  scale,  and  distributing 
it  where  man  needs  it ;  many  natural  minerals  store  heat 
and  light  and  electricity,  and  part  with  them  for  man's 
uses;  the  earth  itself  is  supposed  to  be  a  storehouse  of 
energy ;  and  the  sun  is  admitted  to  have  stored  all  sorts 
of  energy  in  almost  infinite  volume,  for  no  other  known, 
intelhgent  use  than  the  purposes  of  man.  Fiu-ther, 
steel  stores  elastic  energy  better  than  any  vegetable 
life  can  do  it;  every  molecule  stores  cohesive  energy 
better  than  any  animal  life  does  it ;  while  all  intelhgent 
people  are  still  staring,  with  stupid  bewilderment,  at  the 
storage  power  of  an  atom  of  radium.  Matter  indeed,  is 
energy  itself,  and  its  economies  first  made  organic  hfe 
possible  by  thus  correcting  nature's  tendency  to  waste. 
Even  less  can  the  physicist  admit  that  man  alone 
enjoys  the  supernatural  power  of  consciously  reversing 
nature's  processes,  and  of  restoring  her  dissipated  energies 


216    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  their  lost  intensity.  From  the  physicist's  point  of  view, 
Man,  as  a  conscious  and  constant,  single,  natural  force, 
seems  to  have  no  function  except  that  of  dissipating  or 
degrading  energy.  Indeed,  the  evolutionist  himself  has 
complained,  and  is  still  complaining  in  accents  which  grow 
shriller  every  day,  that  man  does  more  to  dissipate  and 
waste  nature's  economies  than  all  the  rest  of  animal  or 
vegetable  life  has  ever  done  to  save  them.  ''Already,"  — 
one  may  hear  the  physicists  aver  —  ''man  dissipates 
every  year  all  the  heat  stored  in  a  thousand  milUon  tons  of 
coal  which  nature  herself  cannot  now  replace,  and  he 
does  this  only  in  order  to  convert  some  ten  or  fifteen  per 
cent  of  it  into  mechanical  energy  immediately  wasted 
on  his  transient  and  commonly  purposeless  objects. 
He  draws  great  reservoirs  of  coal-oil  and  gas  out  of  the 
earth,  which  he  consumes  like  the  coal.  He  is  digging 
out  even  the  peat-bogs  in  order  to  consume  them  as  heat. 
He  has  largely  deforested  the  planet,  and  hastened  its 
desiccation.  He  seizes  all  the  zinc  and  whatever  other 
minerals  he  can  burn,  or  which  he  can  convert  into  other 
forms  of  energy,  and  dissipate  into  space.  His  con- 
sumption of  oxygen  would  be  proportionate  to  his  waste  of 
heat,  and,  according  to  Kelvin,  'If  we  burn  up  our  fuel 
supplies  so  fast,  the  oxygen  of  the  air  may  become  ex- 
hausted, and  that  exhaustion  might  come  about  in  four 


THE  SOLUTIONS  217 

or  five  centuries'  (Life,  1002).  He  startles  and  shocks 
even  himself,  in  his  rational  moments,  by  his  extrava- 
gance, as  in  his  armies  and  armaments  which  are  made 
avowedly  for  no  other  pm'pose  than  to  dissipate  or  degrade 
energy,  or  annihilate  it  as  in  the  destruction  of  life,  on  a  scale 
that  rivals  operations  of  nature.  What  is  still  more  curious, 
his  chief  pleasures,  so  far  as  they  are  his  own  invention, 
consist  in  gratifying  the  same  unintelUgent  passion  for 
dissipating  or  degrading  energy,  as  in  drinking  alcohol, 
or  burning  fireworks,  or  firing  cannon,  or  illuminating 
cities,  or  deafening  them  by  senseless  noises.  Worse 
than  all,  such  is  his  instinct  of  destruction  that  he  system- 
atically exterminates  or  degrades  all  the  larger  forms  of 
animal  life  in  which  nature  stored  her  last  creative  efforts, 
while  he  breeds  artificially,  at  great  expense  of  his  own 
energies,  and  at  cost  of  the  phosphorus  and  lime  accumu- 
lated by  nature's  mostly  extinct  organisms,  the  feebler 
forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  energies  needed  to  make 
good  the  prodigious  waste  of  his  own.  Physicists  and 
physiologists  equally  complain  of  these  tendencies  in 
man,  and  a  large  part  of  their  effort  is  now  devoted  to 
correcting  them ;  but  the  physicist  adds  that,  compared 
with  this  enormous  mass  of  nature's  economies  which  man 
dissipates  every  year  in  rapid  progression,  the  Uttle  he 
captures  from  the  sun,  directly  or  indirectly,  as  heat-rays, 


218    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

or  water-power,  or  wind-power,  is  trifling,  and  the  portion 
that  he  restores  to  higher  intensities  would  be  insignificant 
in  any  case,  even  if  he  did  not  instantly  degrade  and  dissi- 
pate it  again  for  some  momentary  use." 

Against  this  indictment  of  man's  wastefulness,  not  even 
Darwin,  fond  of  paradox  as  he  was,  would  have  cared  to 
champion  man's  defence,  and  since  Darwin  wrote,  the 
waste  of  energy  has  been  doubled  again  and  again.  On 
this  point,  the  evolutionist  stands  at  great  disadvantage. 
Astronomers  are  given  to  holding  the  sun  to  a  sort  of 
moral    accountabiUty    because    it    utilizes    only    about 

2.300.000.000  o^  i*^  ^®^*'  "~  ^^  gravitation,  or  electricity, 
or  whatever  energies  it  dissipates,  —  on  any  known  work, 
and  degrades  the  rest  indefinitely  in  space ;  but,  if  their 
relative  resources  are  taken  into  account,  the  sun  is,  — 
according  to  the  physicists,  —  a  model  economist  com- 
pared with  man.  The  sun  can  keep  up  its  expenditure 
indefinitely,  subject  to  occasional  fits  of  economy;  while 
man  is  a  bottomless  sink  of  waste  unparalleled  in  the 
cosmos,  and  can  already  see  the  end  of  the  immense 
economies  which  his  mother  Nature  stored  for  his  support. 
Almost  all  other  organisms,  especially  the  lowest,  were 
good  economists,  and  inorganic  matter  seemed  to  be 
perfect.  No  physicist  dares  guess  within  millions  of 
years  the  date  when  the  carboniferous  forests  stored  their 


THE  SOLUTIONS  219 

carbon ;  but  it  was  an  affair  of  to-day  compared  with  the 
date  when  steel  stored  its  elasticity,  or  the  magnet  its 
attraction,  or  uranium  its  radiation,  or  the  earth  its 
gravitation;  yet  the  chemists  seem  unconscious  that 
any  of  the  forms  of  matter  actually  known  to  them, 
unless  it  be  the  radiating  activities,  have  lost  or  are  now 
degrading  their  energies,  while  the  higher  animals  have 
passed,  and  are  still  passing,  Uke  dreams. 

The  evolutionist  knows  all  this  quite  as  well  as  the 
degradationist,  and  has  never  held  man's  extravagance 
for  a  virtue  except  in  a  sense  of  his  own,  as  though  he 
were  to  adopt  the  physicist's  figure,  and  say  that  the 
enormous  fall  of  potential  which  he  obtained  from  all 
this  combustion  was  utilized  or  converted  by  him,  and 
reappeared  in  the  intenser  form  of  energy  called  Thought. 
Considered  as  a  mode  of  motion.  Thought  was  far  more 
valuable  than  Heat  or  Electricity,  and  more  much  easily 
stored;  it  was  subject  to  the  usual  mechanical  laws  of 
attraction  and  inertia;  its  analogy  with  Electricity  was 
declared  to  be  close;  and  its  usefulness  was  the  more 
important  because  it  had  been  so  carefully  economized 
that  its  full  reservoir  could  be  drawn  upon,  — as  in 
Universities  and  schools  and  Ubraries,  —  by  all  the  world 
without  limit,  like  the  oxygen  of  the  air. 

In  hterary  language.  Thought  was  God ;  —  Energy  in 


220    THE  DEORADATION  OV  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

abstract  and  absolute  form ;  —  the  ultimate  Substance ; 
—  das  Ding  an  sich.  Most  philosophy  rested  on  this 
idea  that  Thought  is  the  highest  or  subtlest  energy  of 
nature.  The  sim  is  an  immense  energy,  but  does  its 
work  on  earth  only  by  expending  2,300,000,000  times 
more  than  equivalent  energy  in  space,  while  Thought  does 
more  work  without  expending  any  equivalent  energy  at 
all.  By  placing  a  lens  in  the  path  of  the  sun's  rays,  it 
restores  to  any  given  intensity  the  radiation  which  had 
been  indefinitely  diffused.  By  cheap  mechanical  instru- 
ments it  raises  or  lowers  the  intensity  of  the  electric 
current.  By  slight  motions  of  the  hand  it  sets  chemical 
energies  at  work  without  limit;  and,  what  stamps  the 
act  as  divine,  it  impresses  the  result  with  Form. 

Thus  the  dispute  drifts  back  again  to  the  middle-ages. 
The  physicist  can  no  more  compromise  with  the  evolu- 
tionist than  Lord  Bacon  could  compromise  with  the 
Schools.  Galileo  could  as  well  admit  that  Joshua  had 
held  up  the  sun,  as  Kelvin  could  admit  the  power  of  man 
to  reverse  the  dissipation  of  solar  energy,  and  thus  to 
produce  a  new  energy  of  higher  potential,  called  Thought ; 
yet  even  if,  for  the  argument's  sake,  he  had  done  so,  the 
dispute  would  not  have  been  settled.  If  Thought  were 
actually  a  result  of  transforming  other  energies  into  one 
of  a  higher  potential,  it  must  still  be  equally  subject  to 


THE  SOLUTIONS  221 

the  laws  which  governed  those  energies,  and  could  not 
be  an  independent  or  supernatural  force.  Turn  or  twist 
the  dilemma  as  they  pleased,  they  returned  to  it  in  spite 
of  themselves,  and  would  do  no  better  if  the  evolutionist 
were  to  give  way,  in  his  turn,  and  offer  the  concession  he 
had  refused. 

"On  reflection,"  he  might  say,  "I  will  grant  that 
thought  may  radiate  its  energy  away,  hke  electricity  and 
heat ;  a  figure  which,  I  understand  you  to  say,  suits  your 
law  of  degradation  while  leaving  me  free  to  prove,  if  I 
can,  its  power  to  rise  in  intensity.  "Where  will  this  con- 
cession bring  me  out  ?  You  admit  that  the  sun  maintains 
its  energy  indefinitely  by  contracting  its  volume.  Are 
you  willing  to  admit  that  Vital  Energy,  regarded  as  a 
volume  or  society,  might  conceivably  do  the  same  thing? 
and  if  so,  what  then?" 

To  this,  the  physicist  must  be  supposed  to  reply,  — 
however  unwillingly,  —  that  nothing  would  suit  him 
better  than  such  a  concession,  —  which  he  had  in  fact 
begun  by  offering,  —  but  that,  in  common  honesty,  he  was 
bound  to  regard  it  as  a  total  surrender  of  the  evolutionist 
claims.  The  mind  either  was  an  independent  energy, 
or  it  was  not.  If  evolutionists  conceded  at  the  outset 
that  it  was  not,  then  the  mere  figure  mattered  nothing; 
the  dispute  ended  of  itself,  and  the  law  of  thermodynamics 


222  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

went  into  operation.  If,  on  the  contrary,  the  evolutionists 
meant  to  insist  on  independence,  they  would  gain  little 
or  nothing  by  proving  a  power  to  prolong  life,  —  animal, 
vegetable,  or  physical,  —  by  aggregation  or  by  con- 
centration ;  they  merely  changed  the  numerical  value  of 
the  variable  called  Time :  — 

"No  doubt,"  might  a  physicist  be  imagined  to  continue, 
"you  can,  if  you  like,  give  to  this  variable  called  Time  a 
value  approaching  infinity,  and  this  is  your  ordinary 
loop-hole  of  escape.  You  are  welcome  to  it,  as  far  as 
concerns  us  physicists,  and  we  will  help  you  to  get  it,  and 
stay  in  it,  if  you  will  only  leave  us  in  peace  without 
annoying  us  by  your  unscientific,  ignorant  objections 
which  would  put  a  stop  to  science  altogether,  if  you  insist 
on  them.  Yet  when  we  look  at  it  from  your  point  of  view, 
we  cannot  see  what  you  gain  by  increasing  the  element  of 
Time.  You  want  to  increase  not  Time  but  Tension. 
You  do  not  want  to  preserve  society  as  it  is,  —  and  if  you 
did  want  it,  you  could  not  do  it ;  you  want  to  raise  the 
level  of  its  Vital  Energy.  Now,  we  admit  that  Vital 
Energy  is  not  mere  attraction  or  cohesion  or  elasticity, 
but  we  say  that  it  is  limited  by  the  same  laws,  and  we 
know  little  about  any  of  them  except  their  limitations. 
Of  course,  the  mind  can  reverse  them  in  action,  but  so 
can  they  reverse  each  other,  and  the  mind  too;    as 


THE  SOLUTIONS  223 

cohesion  reverses  gravitation;  and  a  drop  of  water  re- 
verses cohesion ;  and  one  degree  of  heat  reverses  all.  A 
watch-spring  stores  elasticity  better  than  the  mind 
stores  thought.  Any  chance  bit  of  obsidian  or  crystal 
can  set  forests  afire,  without  calling  itself  intelligent.  A 
fall  of  one  degree  in  temperature  gives  form  to  an  icicle, 
without  claiming  to  be  divine.  A  summer  shower  develops 
electricity  at  a  tension  sufficient  to  reverse  the  energy 
of  as  many  minds  as  get  in  its  way,  without  asserting  the 
smallest  pretension  to  reverse  natural  laws.  Nature  is 
full  of  rival  energies ;  and,  —  for  anything  we  know,  — 
may  once  have  been  full  of  hostile  energies ;  but,  hostile 
or  friendly,  its  infinite  variety  of  Forms,  Directions, 
Intensities,  and  Complexities,  had  taken  order,  from  the 
smallest  electron  and  ion  to  the  widest  range  of  stellar 
space  measured  by  the  most  powerful  light-ray,  going 
through  every  possible  form  of  physical  evolution  before 
man,  —  or  his  instinct,  —  or  his  reason,  —  or  any  other 
animal,  or  vegetable,  or  organic  life,  or  vital  energy,  ever 
stirred!" 

If  then  the  evolutionist,  irritated  by  treatment  which 
seems  a  far-off  echo  of  the  remarks  of  the  King  of  Brob- 
dingnag  to  Gulliver  nearly  two  hundred  years  ago,  should 
still  insist  upon  his  mind  being  the  highest  possible 
intensity  of  energy  on  account  of  its  consciousness,  the 


224  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

degradationist  might  probably  lose  his  temper  and  his 
manners  outright,  to  the  point  of  breaking  out :  — 

"The  psychologists  have  already  told  you  that  Con- 
sciousness is  only  a  phase  in  the  decline  of  vital  energy ;  — 
a  stage  of  weakening  will.  We  physicists,  even  less  than 
you  Darwinists,  deny  the  intensity  of  the  Will,  but  we 
know  it  to  be  stronger  in  the  Scarab  or  the  Scorpion, 
where  it  is  unconscious,  than  in  Monkey  or  Man,  where 
it  is  conscious;  while  we  watch,  over  and  over  again, 
with  abject  incredulity,  the  apotheosis  of  a  butterfly  or 
the  flowering  of  an  orchid,  which  reveal  to  our  scientific 
sense  an  intensity  of  vital  energy  out  of  all  comparison 
with  that  of  man.  We  never  tire  of  marvelhng  at  the 
essence  of  substance ;  —  at  the  energy  of  the  atom  or  the 
glow-worm;  but  this  is  the  motive  behind  our  whole 
thermodynamic  law. 

''The  highest  intensities  of  nature,  such  as  produced 
the  atom  and  the  molecule,  were  precisely  the  earliest 
on  our  scale.  Of  the  vital  energies  in  the  order  of  time 
we  cannot  pretend  to  know  much,  since  all  the  types 
seem  to  have  first  developed  themselves,  during  a  great 
many  millions  of  years,  in  water,  or  underground,  in 
conditions  indefinitely  varied  and  altogether  unknown; 
but  the  moment  an  animal  appears  above-ground,  it 
turns  out  to  be  a  Silurian  Scorpion,  a  type  of  the  intensest 


THE  SOLUTIONS  225 

vital  energy  that  ever  lived,  if  one  can  trust  the  entomol- 
ogists. Next,  in  the  Carboniferous,  we  happen  first  on 
a  dragon-fly  with  'a  spread  of  wing  much  exceeding  two 
feet'  (Dana,  702).  Carboniferous  insects,  hke  carbonif- 
erous forests,  suggest  intensities  indefinitely  stronger  in 
creative  power  than  any  energies  known  to  be  at  work 
to-day.  In  fact,  no  creative  energies  whatever  are  known 
to  be  at  work  today,  unless  it  be  the  radiating  activities. 
Mere  heat  creates  nothing.  Neither  heat  nor  its  absence 
accoimts  for  any  of  the  problems  of  vital  energy,  — 
neither  for  the  cell,  nor  the  form,  nor  the  movement,  nor 
the  consciousness,  nor  the  descent,  nor  the  inheritance, 
nor  the  intelligence,  of  organisms;  nor  does  motion 
account  for  direction.  No  intelligent  man  now-a-days  is 
satisfied  with  a  purely  mechanical  formula. 

"Palaeontologists  talk  only  of  speciahzation,  as  though 
the  more  elaborate  type  were  the  higher  intensity.  The 
opposite  is  more  likely  to  be  true.  Geology  suggests 
plainly  that,  after  at  least  fifty  million  years  of  conditions 
which  made  life  impossible  except  under  water,  these 
anarchic  forces  dissipated  themselves  so  far  as  to  settle 
into  an  equihbrium  which  showed  itself  on  land  in  the 
wild  exuberance  of  the  carboniferous  forests,  and  which 
then  developed  into  the  wilder  exuberance  of  the  Eocene 
mammals.    How  long  this  exuberance  lasted,  Saporta 

Q 


226    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

has  told  us ;  and  he  is  also  authority  for  the  fact,  —  not 
the  theory,  I  say,  —  that  the  equilibrium  was  over- 
thrown by  the  steady  dissipation  of  energy.  Gaudry, 
another  sufficient  authority,  has  added  that  vital  energy 
fell  step  by  step,  and  phase  by  phase,  with  solar  energy. 
The  geologists  in  general  seem  to  agree  with  the  astron- 
omers in  teaching  that  both  forms  of  energy  will  continue 
to  fall  in  intensity  until  both  disappear.  Meanwhile  we 
are  perfectly  at  liberty  to  teach  that  the  relative  intensity 
of  each  phase  measured  the  relative  intensity  of  each 
creation  of  land-organisms  in  the  order  of  time.  We  are 
not  only  at  liberty  to  do  it ;  we  are  logically  compelled  to 
insist  upon  it.  No  other  order  of  sequence  can  be  made 
to  accord  with  the  positively  miraculous  properties  which 
defy  explanation  in  organic  as  in  inorganic  nature. 

"We  all  remember  the  desperate  efforts  that  Darwin 
made  to  fit  within  a  uniformitarian  schedule  these  violent 
leaps  in  the  energy  of  evolution,  but  we  seldom  realize 
how  difficult  he  found  the  task  of  convincing  himself 
that  his  own  scheme  was  convenient.  When  he  said,  as 
he  often  did,  that  he  never  thought  of  the  eye  without  a 
chill, —  'the  eye,  to  this  day  (1860),  gives  me  a  cold 
shudder,'  —  he  meant,  —  among  other  things,  —  that 
his  theory  was  good  for  nothing  as  a  convenient  means  of 
explaining  why  the  eye  should  have  leaped  to  perfection 


THE  SOLUTIONS  227 

from  its  start,  when  it  should  have  been  the  slowest  in  the 
order  of  evolution.  In  fact,  the  eye  of  the  first  fish,  at 
the  beginning  of  geological  time,  was  at  least  as  good  as 
that  of  his  descendant  still  living  unchanged;  and  the 
first  trilobites,  somewhere  in  Silurian  ages,  had  eyes 
of  twelve  or  fifteen  thousand  facets.  'Assuredly,'  saya 
Gaudry,  'we  marvel  at  such  complication  in  creatures  of 
such  great  antiquity,  but  we  cannot  conclude  that  the 
organ  of  sight  reached  its  whole  perfection  in  the  primary 
period,  for  probably  the  thirty  thousand  facets  of  Remo- 
pleurides  were  not  equal  in  value  to  the  two  beautiful 
eyes  of  our  actual  mammals.'  Such  a  probably  might 
well  cause  Darwin  a  chill ;  but  had  he  gone  on  to  say  that 
the  decUne  of  the  Tertiary  quadrupeds  caused  him  a  worse 
shudder,  he  would  have  said  only  what  Dana  seemed  to 
feel,  and  what  strikes  every  physicist  with  astonishment 
when  he  reads  it  in  Dana,  about  the  universal  stunting  of 
animal  hfe  in  recent  times.  In  South  America  alone, 
during  and  since  the  glacial  epoch,  the  extinct  species  of 
quadrupeds  number  more  than  a  hundred,  while,  among 
the  peculiarly  South  American  order  of  Ant-eaters,  the 
extinct  species  were  more  numerous  than  all  those  that 
'now  exist  in  that  part  of  the  continent,  and  were  far 
larger  animals.'  In  Australia  the  Marsupials  prove  the 
same  law :  'As  on  the  other  continents,  the  moderns  are 


228  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

dwarfs  by  the  side  of  the  ancient  species.'  As  a  universal 
rule,  the  fact  of  dwindling  size  holds  true  of  a  large  part 
of  the  mammals,  including  elephants  and  herbivores  as 
well  as  many  carnivores,  edentates,  rodents  and  marsu- 
pials : '  The  kinds  that  continued  into  modern  time  became 
dwindled  in  the  change  wherever  found  over  the  globe, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  genial  climates  are  still  to 
be  found  over  large  regions'  (Dana,  997).  Neither 
Kelvin  nor  Faye,  neither  Lapparent  nor  Flammarion, 
asserted  the  brutal  facts  of  degradation  nearly  so  strongly 
as  Dana. 

"To  this  law,  which  has  already  reduced  us  to  'living 
in  an  impoverished  world,'  you  evolutionists  require  us 
physicists,  under  some  mysterious  penalty,  to  make  for 
you  an  exception  in  favor  of  man.  We  cannot  do  it. 
We  are  wilhng  to  yield  much  of  the  old  mechanical 
ground.  We  grant  that  we  cannot  explain  why,  in  man 
or  in  molecule,  the  primitive  energies  of  nature  took 
directions  which  imply,  —  in  our  limited  experience,  —  a 
reasoning  forethought.  Cause  is  a  transcendental  prob- 
lem beyond  our  grasp.  We  no  longer  venture  even  to 
assert  that  we  know  the  creative  forces  at  all.  We  say 
only  that  in  the  world  which  we  do  know,  we  can  see 
nothing  supernatural  in  action.  Infinite  complication 
we  admit,   but  no  ultimate  contradiction.    Sooner  or 


THE  SOLUTIONS  229 

later,  every  apparent  exception,  whether  man  or  radium, 
tends  to  fall  within  the  domain  of  physics.  Against 
this  necessity,  human  beings  have  always  rebelled.  For 
thousands  of  years  they  have  stood  apart,  superior  to 
physical  laws.  The  time  has  come  when  they  must 
yield. 

"The  claim  that  Reason  must  be  classed  as  an  energy 
of  the  highest  intensity  is  itself  unreasonable.  On  the 
contrary.  Reason  is  the  last  in  time,  and  therefore  the 
lowest  in  tension.  According  to  our  western  standards, 
the  most  intense  phase  of  human  Energy  occurred  in  the 
form  of  religious  and  artistic  emotion,  —  perhaps  in  the 
Crusades  and  Gothic  Churches ;  —  but  since  then,  though 
vastly  increased  in  apparent  mass,  human  energy  has 
lost  intensity  and  continues  to  lose  it  with  accelerated 
rapidity,  as  the  Church  proves.  Organized  in  society,  as 
a  volume,  it  becomes  a  multipUed  number  of  enfeebled 
units,  on  which,  Uke  the  eye  in  insects,  reason  acts  as 
an  enormously  multiphed  lens,  converging  nature's  hnes 
of  will,  and  taking  direction  from  them,  but  adding  noth- 
ing of  its  own.  Man  has,  indeed,  —  or  had,  —  in  a  few 
of  his  stems,  some  faculty  for  artistic  expression,  not 
nearly  so  strong  as  that  of  some  plants,  or  some  butter- 
flies, or  some  birds,  but  more  varied.  This  instinct  he 
probably  inherited  from  an  earlier,  more  gifted,  animal; 


230    THE  DEGRADATION  OP  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

but  as  a  creative  energy  he  inherited  next  to  nothing. 
The  coral  polyp  is  a  giant  beside  him.  As  an  energy  he 
has  but  one  dominant  function :  —  that  of  accelerating 
the  operation  of  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics.  So 
far  as  his  reason  acts  as  an  energy  at  all,  it  is  a  miraculous 
invention  for  this  purpose,  which  inspires  wonder  and 
almost  worship,  but  in  strictness  and  reason  does  not 
work,  —  it  is  only  a  mechanism ;  —  nature's  energy, 
which  we  have  agreed  to  call  Will,  that  lies  behind  reason, 
does  the  work,  —  and  degrades  the  energy  in  doing  it !" 
Evidently,  on  these  hues,  no  sort  of  agreement  is 
possible.  The  two  figures  contradict  each  other  beyond 
the  chance  of  concihation.  Of  course  the  contradiction 
has  been  slightly  exaggerated  to  make  it  clear ;  but  if  the 
physicist  had  not  himself  lost  the  high  Uterary  potential  of 
Swift  and  Voltaire,  he  would  exaggerate  to  much  better 
purpose,  and  would  handle  the  unfortunate  creature 
called  Man  in  a  temper  such  as  any  one  may  renew  who 
cares  to  go  back  to  Bunyan  or  Dante  or  the  Bible,  not  to 
mention  the  Prophets  in  particular;  but  he  would  con- 
vince no  one.  Man  refuses  to  be  degraded  in  self-esteem, 
of  which  he  has  never  had  enough  to  save  him  from  bitter 
self-reproaches.  He  yearns  for  flattery,  and  he  needs  it. 
The  contradiction  between  science  and  instinct  is  so  radi- 
cal that,  though  science  should  prove  twenty  times  over, 


THE  SOLUTIONS  231 

by  every  method  of  demonstration  known  to  it,  that  man 
is  a  thermodynamic  mechanism,  instinct  would  reject  the 
proof,  and  whenever  it  should  be  convinced,  it  would  have 
to  die. 

If  the  deadlock  were  a  new  thing,  the  situation  would 
not  be  so  difficult,  but  the  history  of  the  last  five  hundred 
years  tells  of  Httle  else.  Man  began  by  usurping  the  rank 
of  lord  of  creation.  Gahleo  and  Newton  succeeded  in 
deposing  him,  much  against  his  will,  —  as  the  Church 
very  candidly  confessed,  —  but  he  has  never  despaired  of 
reinstating  himself  by  means  of  his  Reason.  The  doctrine 
of  evolution  seemed,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  to  favor 
him.  For  fifty  years,  society  flattered  itself  that  science 
stood  soHdly  behind  it,  Ufting  it  up  from  lower  powers  to 
higher,  and  restoring  it  to  its  old  rank  and  self-respect 
as  child  and  heir  to  the  infinite.  The  contrary  assertion 
of  Kelvin  had  no  effect  upon  it  whatever.  Indeed  if 
Eduard  von  Hartmann  is  right,  society  deUberately  chose 
to  be  silent  about  the  direction  of  physics,  and  refused  to 
think  or  talk  about  it ;  but  silence  has  never  stopped  this 
dispute,  at  least  in  western  civihzation,  since  the  martyr- 
dom of  Prometheus,  and  merely  hurried  the  moment  when, 
on  scientific  principles,  another  catastrophe,  like  that  of  the 
Newtonian  philosophy,  became  imminent. 

WiUiam  Thomson  and  Clausius,  Helmholz  and  Balfour 


232    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Stewart,  asserted  and  reiterated  the  certainty  of  this 
catastrophe,  in  vain,  as  Descartes  had  asserted  it,  —  also 
in  vain,  —  two  hundred  years  before ;  but  Descartes 
offered  a  compromise,  and  in  that  respect  differed  from 
Kelvin.  Descartes  proposed  to  free  man  from  material 
bondage,  provided  he  might  mechanize  all  other  vital 
energies.  Society  rose  in  arms  to  protect  the  dog,  and 
so  defeated  the  scheme,  leaving  the  world  to  go  on  assert- 
ing two  contradictory  principles  in  the  same  breath,  down 
to  the  present  day,  to  the  undiminished  embarrassment 
of  Universities,  and  with  Uttle  perceptible  change  in  the 
situation,  except  that  the  Universities  of  to-day  hesitate 
to  assert  with  confidence  the  old  conviction  of  spiritual 
authority,  showing  in  this  respect  a  distinct  decUne  in 
energy ;  while  technical  instruction  has  reached,  —  or 
seems  on  the  verge  of  reaching,  —  the  point  where  it 
must  insist  on  the  universal  appUcation  of  its  thermo- 
dynamic law. 

Since  compromise  of  principle  seems  to  be  out  of  the 
question,  there  remains  only  the  resource  of  direct  con- 
flict. Each  party  is  thrown  back  on  the  horns  of  a 
dilemma,  —  the  same  old  dilemma  of  Saint  Augustine 
and  Descartes,  —  the  deadlock  of  free-will.  The  pro- 
fessor of  physics  will  ask  his  colleague,  the  professor  of 
history,  to  explain  the  process  by  which  energy  raises  its 


THE  SOLUTIONS  233 

own  potential  without  cost,  since  this  has  been  an  object 
greatly  desired  by  schoolmasters  from  the  earliest  known 
ages,  and  would  singularly  simplify  the  professorial 
accounts.  The  teacher  of  history,  who  has  trouble 
enough  already  in  trying  to  raise  the  potential  of  his 
scholars'  energy,  can  only  retort  by  asking  his  colleague 
to  show  how  his  own  teaching  proves  progressive  enfeeble- 
ment  and  degradation  of  quality.  The  degradationist 
might  be  quite  ready  to  admit  it,  and  quite  competent  to 
prove  it,  but  he  knows  that  he  has  already  turned  his  own 
thermodynamic  law  into  a  means  of  convincing  society  of 
the  contrary.  Since  the  year  1830,  when  the  great 
development  of  physical  energies  began,  all  school- 
teaching  has  learned  to  take  for  granted  that  man's 
progress  in  mental  energy  is  measured  by  his  capture  of 
physical  forces,  amounting  to  some  fifty  million  steam 
horse-power  from  coal,  and  at  least  as  much  more  from 
chemical  and  elementary  sources;  besides  indefinite 
potentials  in  his  stored  experience,  and  progressive  rise 
in  the  intensities  of  the  forces  he  keeps  in  constant  use. 
He  cares  little  what  becomes  of  all  this  new  power ;  he  is 
satisfied  to  know  that  he  habitually  develops  heat  at 
3000°  Centigrade  and  electricity  by  the  hundred  thousand 
volts,  from  sources  of  indefinitely  degraded  energy; 
and  that  his  mind  has  learned  to  control  them.     Man's 


234  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Reason  once  credited  with  this  addition  of  volume  and 
intensity,  its  victory  seems  assured.  The  teacher  of 
history  need  then  trouble  himself  with  no  further  doubts 
of  Evolution ;  but  the  teacher  of  physics  seems  —  at 
least  to  an  ignorant  world  whose  destiny  hangs  on  the 
balance,  —  very  much  required  to  defend  himself. 

Although  this  form  of  physical  psychology  is  less  than 
a  hundred  years  old  it  has  already  taken  possession  of 
society  so  completely  as  to  serve  it,  in  place  of  the  old 
religious  and  mechanical  formulas,  for  a  philosophical 
foundation.  The  historian  has  a  right  to  use  it  as  such ; 
but  according  to  the  understanding  of  the  physical  law 
already  discussed,  one  would  think  physicists  debarred 
from  admitting  it.  To  them  it  should  seem  an  illusion, 
although  one  difficult  to  deal  with ;  but,  as  far  as  a  by- 
stander has  means  of  judging,  they  would  still  be  at  liberty 
to  turn  the  dilemma  about,  and  seek  to  impale  their 
antagonist  on  the  reversed  horn,  by  suggesting  that  the 
theory  of  tropism  or  induction,  or  of  physico-chemical 
relations  in  general,  seems  to  require  that  the  psychical 
will,  under  such  conditions,  should  not  absorb  physical 
energy  so  much  as  physical  energy  would  absorb  the 
psychical  will.  Two  similar  energies,  when  in  contact, 
would  tend  to  a  common  level ;  force,  if  powerful  enough, 
would  control  thought ;    the  ocean  would  dissolve  the 


THE  SOLUTIONS  236 

Crystal  of  salt;  so  that,  if  the  evolutionist  should 
insist  on  identifying  the  quahty  of  his  psychical  energy 
with  the  quantity  of  his  steam-  or  water-power  or  electric 
voltage,  the  physicist  would  expect  to  see  the  psychical 
potential  of  society  vanish  as  suddenly  as  the  potential 
of  a  Ley  den  jar. 

Perhaps  the  Universities  might  be  quicker  than  the 
technical  schools  to  see  the  point  of  this  retort,  since  they 
claim,  in  theory,  to  deal  with  quaUty  rather  than  with 
quantity,  and  possibly  some  professors  have  noticed 
that  quality  may  sometimes  suffer  from  contact  with 
volume.  The  idea  is  not  precisely  new,  —  far  from  it !  — 
even  beyond  the  pale  of  European  Universities,  portions 
of  society  have  shown  a  somewhat  enfeebled  instinct  of 
revolt  against  the  psychical  processes  of  the  press  and  the 
pubUc.  Various  writers  have  discussed  the  effect  of 
dissolving  society  into  a  single  mixture ;  even  a  name,  — 
panmixia  —  has  been  made  for  it.  Nothing  is  commoner 
than  the  prejudice  against  mechanical  energy  as  a 
weakener  of  nervous  energy  whenever  it  gets  control,  as 
in  manufacturing  towns ;  or  the  beUef  that  great  masses 
of  people  under  uniform  conditions  tend  to  a  mechanical 
uniformity  of  mind,  as  in  agricultural  districts ;  but  the 
interest  of  the  subject  Ues  less  in  the  application  of  the 
theory  than  in  the  shape  which  the  theory  would  have 


236    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

to  take  in  order  to  conform  with  the  rest  of  the  law 
of  thermodynamics.  Physicists  know  best  what  their 
mathematical  formulas  for  electricity  and  gases  and 
solutions  are ;  historians  have  no  right  to  meddle  with 
the  methods  of  colleagues  in  rival  departments;  but 
they  cannot  help  feeling  curiosity  to  know  whether  Ost- 
wald's  Hne  of  reasoning  would  logically  end  in  subjecting 
both  psychical  and  physico-chemical  energies  to  the  nat- 
ural and  obvious  analogy  of  heat,  and  extending  the  law 
of  Entropy  over  all.  (Ostwald,  "Vorlesungen,"  Leipzig, 
1902,  p.  398.) 

Few  physicists  would  be  hkely  to  see  any  scientific 
sense  in  this  personal  appUcation  of  their  law,  and  no  one 
is  readier  than  the  historian  to  admit  that  vital  Energy  is 
probably  not  so  simple  as  any  formula  that  he  could  state, 
or  understand  if  stated  to  him.  The  most  ardent  lover 
of  paradox,  —  the  most  inveterate  humorist,  —  would 
hardly  think  it  worth  his  while  to  follow  a  train  of  reason- 
ing which  would  surely  immolate  physics  and  metaphysics 
together.  Such  amusements  seem  to  be  reserved  for 
astronomers;  but  neither  historians  nor  sociologists  can 
afford  to  let  themselves  be  driven  into  admitting  that 
every  gain  of  power,  —  from  gunpowder  to  steam,  —  from 
the  dynamo  to  the  Daimler  motor,  —  has  been  made  at 
the  cost  of  man's  —  and  of  woman's  —  vitality.    The 


THE  SOLUTIONS  237 

mischiefs  thus  charged  upon  Reason  would  not  end  there. 
Metaphysics  as  well  as  mathematics  would  measure 
enfeeblement ;  philosophy  as  well  as  mechanics  would 
mark  degradation;  the  Universities  as  well  as  the  tech- 
nical schools  would  aUke  close  their  doors  without  waiting 
for  the  sun  to  grow  cold. 

Direct  conflict,  therefore,  seems  to  be  as  barren  as 
compromise.  Heretofore  in  human  experience,  such 
reasoning  would  have  been  dismissed  at  once  as  only  the 
usual  futile  attempt  at  reduction  to  the  absurd.  That 
it  would  pass  for  such  in  a  University  of  to-day  is  an  open 
question;  it  sounds  rather  hke  another  way  of  saying 
what  Amdt,  Branco,  and  Hopf,  as  well  as  Rousseau  and 
a  thousand  others  have  said  for  the  past  hundred  and 
fifty  years ;  but  in  any  case  it  has  no  value  for  teachers, 
since  it  leads  only  to  the  stoppage  of  teaching  altogether. 
If  the  teacher  of  history  cares  to  contest  the  ground  with 
the  teacher  of  physics,  he  must  become  a  physicist  him- 
self, and  learn  to  use  laboratory  methods.  He  needs 
technical  tools  quite  as  much  as  the  electrician  does ; 
large  formulas,  like  Willard  Gibbs'  Rule  of  Phases; 
generalizations,  no  matter  how  temporary  or  hypo- 
thetical, such  as  all  mathematicians  use  for  the  con- 
venience of  their  scholars.  The  whole  field  of  physics 
is  covered  with  such  temporary  structures,  mere  ap- 


238    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

proximations  to  truth,  but  in  constant  demand  as  tools. 
Mathematicians  practise  absolute  freedom;  they  have 
the  right  —  and  use  it  —  to  assume  that  a  straight  line 
is,  or  is  not,  the  shortest  distance  between  two  points, 
as  they  please.  In  the  whole  domain  of  science,  no  field 
of  cultivation  is  poorer  in  such  labor-saving  devices  than 
that  of  human  history,  yet  Man,  as  a  form  of  energy,  is 
in  most  need  of  getting  a  firm  footing  on  the  law  of 
thermodynamics.  One  cannot  doubt  that  Lord  Kelvin 
could  have  suggested  half-a-dozen  figures  which  would 
answer  the  purpose,  although  he  might  very  well  have 
refused  to  waste  his  own  stock  of  vital  energy  in  the  effort 
to  prove  his  thermodynamic  ascent  from  a  hypothetical 
eocene  lemur,  or  even  from  a  duck-billed  platypus ;  neither 
of  which  would  have  promised  energetic  means  of  saving 
him  from  the  pitfalls  which  his  keen  mathematical  in- 
stinct would  have  shown  him  as  the  work  of  his  fellow- 
physicists,  planted  directly  in  his  path. 

Whatever  the  difficulties,  Kelvin  would  have  faced 
them  honestly.  He  had  courage  beyond  the  common, 
and  if  the  problem  had  been  forced  on  him  as  he  forced 
it  on  others,  he  would  not  even  have  felt  himself  obliged 
to  obey  his  own  laws.  Almost  in  his  last  words  he  pa- 
thetically proclaimed  that  his  fife  was  a  failure  in  its  long 
effort  to  reduce  his  physical  energies  to  a  single  term. 


THE  SOLUTIONS  239 

Dying  he  left  the  unity,  duahty,  or  multiphcity  of  energies 
as  much  disputed  as  ever.  ''A  certain  anarchy  reigns 
in  the  sciences  of  nature's  domain,"  says  M.  Lucien 
Poincar^,  who  is  regarded  as  a  sufficient  authority; 
"any  venture  may  be  risked;  no  law  appears  rigorously 
necessary."  Within  the  past  year  Professor  Joly  of 
Dublin  has  seriously  risked  such  a  venture  in  his  "Radio- 
activity and  Geology;  an  account  of  the  Influence  of 
Radio-active  Energy  on  Terrestrial  History"  (London, 
1909) ;  and  although  the  general  reader  gathers  from  it 
mainly  the  conclusion  that  physical  science  is  more  or 
less  chaotic,  this  conclusion  is  only  what  he  needs  to  reach 
before  he  can  begin  to  deal  with  vital  science,  which  is  all 
chaos.  "We  see  the  middle-  and  the  end-series  of  the 
phylogenetic  series,"  says  Reinke;  "that  we  do  not  see 
the  beginning  is  self-evident,  since  it  was  built  up  in  a 
period  of  the  earth's  history  which  is  for  us  tran- 
scendental" ("Einleitung,"  p.  612) ;  we  could  not 
understand  it  if  we  did  see  it.  So  far  as  concerns  the 
history  of  man,  every  period  of  the  earth's  history, 
beyond  its  actual  condition,  is  transcendental.  The 
anthropologist  knows  nothing  whatever  about  it.  Among 
a  thousand  possible  varieties  of  primitive  man,  he  has 
scarcely  more  than  two  or  three  doubtful  clues  to  follow, 
and  thus  far  these  lead  nowhere. 


240    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

i  The  single  point  about  which  Professor  Klaatsch 
speaks  with  positiveness  approaching  temper,  is  that 
"the  primitive  man  must  not  be  treated  either  as  morally 
bad  or  as  intellectually  stupid.  .  .  .  The  primitive  man, 
our  ancestor,  is  to  be  prized  as  a  being  high  in  rank,  who, 
in  many  a  point  of  view,  in  force  of  individuahty  and 
vigor  of  self-assertion  (Kraft  der  Individualitat  und 
Kampfesmut)  was  the  superior  of  his  cultured  heirs 
(seinen  Epigonen  der  Kultur)."  (Kobner  Versammlung 
der  Deutschen  Naturforscher  und  Arzte.  Herbst,  1908.) 
Apparently  this  is  the  only  certain  result  of  sixty  years' 
effort  in  physics  and  physiology.  Forced  back  on  the 
logical  suicide  of  asserting  or  accepting  an  act  of  creation, 
biologists  prefer  to  admit  mental  enfeeblement,  even  at 
the  risk  of  being  driven  to  admit  both;  so  that,  if  the 
safety  of  society  should  seem  now  to  depend  on  assum- 
ing a  multiple  cause,  as  of  old  on  establishing  the  imity 
of  creation,  nothing  obliges  society  to  persist  in  its  monist 
scheme.  If  the  physicist  cannot  make  mind  the  master, 
as  the  metaphysician  would  like,  he  can  at  least  abstain 
from  making  it  the  slave. 

So  little  essential  is  monism,  that  M.  H.  Poincar^ 
lately  startled  the  world  by  avowing  that  physicists  used 
that  formula  only  because  all  science  would  become  im- 
possible if  they  were  not  allowed  to  assume  simple  hy- 


THE  SOLUTIONS  241 

potheses  ("La  Science  et  THypothese,"  p.  173) ;  but 
this  mental  need  of  unity  is  also  a  weakness,  which  gives 
the  degradationist  an  artificial  and  altogether  unfair 
advantage.  The  convenience  of  unity  is  beyond  ques- 
tion, and  convenience  overrides  morals  as  well  as  money, 
when  a  vast  majority  of  minds,  educated  or  not,  are 
invited  to  live  in  a  complex  of  anarchical  energies,  with 
only  the  privilege  of  acting  as  chief  anarchists.  Be- 
wildered and  outraged  they  reject  the  image;  but  they 
find  that  of  diffusion  or  degradation  so  simple  and  so 
natural  as  to  satisfy  every  want.  The  Darwinian  readily 
admits  that  Kelvin's  sun  accounts  for  evolution  better 
than  Darwin's  did ;  and  he  is  only  too  ready  to  drop  all 
the  school-phrases,  —  to  call  the  process  Transformation, 
and  so,  quietly,  surrender  the  issue.  He  is  equally  ready 
to  admit  that  Darwin  never  supplied  a  motive  power 
that  should  vary  in  force  with  the  phenomena ;  he  might 
even  go  so  far  as  to  concede  that  the  want  of  such  an 
energy  had  embarrassed  biology  nearly  to  the  point  of 
paralysis;  while  he  must  honestly  grant  that  Kelvin 
began  mathematically  by  giving  himself,  from  the  start, 
all  the  power  he  needed,  in  the  degree  in  which  he  needed 
it,  so  that  his  system  supplied  its  own  force,  —  like  the 
Niagara  River,  —  by  degrading  its  own  energies.  Sim- 
plicity may  not  be  evidence  of  truth,  and  imity  is  perhaps 


242  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  most  deceptive  of  all  the  innumerable  illusions  of 
mind ;  but  both  are  primary  instincts  in  man,  and  have 
an  attraction  on  the  mind  akin  to  that  of  gravitation 
on  matter.  The  idea  of  unity  survives  the  idea  of  God 
or  of  Universe;  it  is  innate  and  intuitive.  Thought 
floats  much  more  easily  towards  than  against  it,  and 
from  the  moment  when  heat,  or  electricity,  or  thought, 
or  any  other  form  or  symbol  or  medium  of  energy,  was 
likened  to  a  falling  substance  tending  to  an  ultimate 
ocean  of  Entropy,  nothing  was  simpler  than  to  plot  out 
the  ordinates  and  abscissas  that  marked  its  curve  of 
evolution.  Astronomy,  geology,  palaeontology,  biology, 
psychology,  could  all  move  majestically  down  the  dechne. 
Perhaps  the  feature  of  the  scheme  that  was  most  re- 
pulsive to  instinct,  was  most  seductive  to  science,  —  its 
fatal  facility  in  accounting  for  Reason.  All  organisms 
would  tend  to  develop  nervous  systems  when  dynamically 
ill-nourished.  As  the  Drosera  is  represented  to  have  ' 
taken  to  a  diet  of  insects  when  it  could  no  longer  nourish 
itself  sufficiently  as  a  vegetable,  or  as  a  tree  may  throw 
out  wider  and  deeper  roots  in  the  degree  that  complexity 
might  bring  moisture,  so  the  vital  energy  which  had 
developed  in  the  exuberance  of  physical  quantity  so  long 
as  its  dynamic  supplies  were  in  excess  of  its  needs,  would 
turn  itself,  as  its  conditions  were  impoverished,  into  those 


THE  SOLUTIONS  243 

"connecting,  or,  as  they  are  technically  called,  association- 
fibres,  which  make  nerve-currents  work  together  as  they 
could  not  without  being  thus  associated."  Thought  then 
appears  in  nature  as  an  arrested,  —  in  other  words,  as 
a  degraded,  —  physical  action.  The  theory  is  convenient, 
and  convenience  makes  law,  at  least  in  the  laboratory. 

In  this  freedom  of  handling  his  energies  the  physicist 
enjoys  another  easy  advantage  over  the  sociologist.  As 
already  pointed  out,  the  physicist  is  safe  from  inter- 
ference so  long  as  he  can  still  promise  expansion  of  power, 
or  reUef  from  pain ;  while  the  oldest  and  driest  professor 
of  history  would  smile  at  the  idea  of  trying  to  imitate 
his  vivacious  colleague  by  telling  his  students,  at  the 
opening  of  the  collegiate  year,  that,  "as  an  approximately 
correct  working  hypothesis,"  he  should  proceed  to  treat 
the  history  of  modern  Europe  and  America  as  a  typical 
example  of  energies  indicating  degradation  "with  head- 
long rapidity"  towards  "inevitable  death."  Probably  he 
would  have  no  more  diflficulty  than  the  physicist  has, 
in  making  his  material  fit  his  figure;  history  can  be 
written  in  one  sense  just  as  easily  as  in  another;  but 
however  perfect  this  figure  might  seem  to  him  he  would 
not  think  it  suited  to  the  interests  of  the  students  or  of 
the  University,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  University 
has  never  committed  itself  to  the  contrary.    Indeed  he 


244    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE   DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

could  truthfully  say  that  the  Universities  in  Europe  have 
never  preached  upward  evolution  at  all. 

History  began  with  admitting  as  its  starting-point 
that  the  speechless  animal  who  raised  himself  to  the  use 
of  an  inflected  language  must  have  made  an  effort  greater 
and  longer  than  the  effort  required  for  him,  after  perfect- 
ing his  tongue,  to  vulgarize  and  degrade  it.  Even  after 
descending  to  the  familiar  facts  of  relatively  recent  evolu- 
tion historians  never  teach  that  Egyptian  pyramids  and 
tombs  show  childlike  inferiority  to  the  tombs  and  temples 
of  Berlin.  Artists  have  never  been  known  to  illustrate 
their  lectures  on  the  history  of  their  art  by  showing  how 
much  the  sculpture  of  Pheidias  and  Praxiteles  might  have 
been  improved  by  an  acquaintance  with  the  sculpture  of 
London.  Dramatists  do  not  hold  up  to  derision  the 
feebleness  of  Aeschylus  or  the  folly  of  Aristophanes  be- 
fore the  gigantic  force  and  genius  of  Sardou  and  Rostand 
on  the  Paris  stage.  American  professors  do  not  read 
Pindar  or  Lucretius  aloud  in  order  to  suit  the  inteUigence 
of  their  children  in  the  nurseries  of  New  York  and  Chicago. 
Historians  seldom  express  contempt  for  Thucydides,  and 
still  devote  volumes  to  Alexander  the  Great  and  Julius 
Caesar.  They  have  obstinately  shirked  the  duty  of  ap- 
plying the  law  of  elevation  to  their  view  of  history,  but 
rather  have  bitterly  opposed  it.    Even  the  prophet  of 


THE  SOLUTIONS  245 

progress  in  the  English  school,  —  Macaulay,  —  could 
not  resist  the  old  trick  of  reviving  a  conventional  bar- 
barian to  gloat,  "in  the  midst  of  a  vast  sohtude,"  —  over 
the  exhausted  energies  of  England.  Histories  invariably 
use  Kelvin's  figure  whenever  it  is  convenient,  and  talk 
of  new  races  in  set  terms  as  so  much  fresh  fuel,  or  oxygen, 
flung  on  the  burnt-out  energies  of  empire;  while  the 
greatest  historical  work  in  the  EngUsh  language  is  called 
"The  Decline  and  Fall." 

Something  less  than  two  himdred  and  fifty  years  ago, 
all  the  greatest  scholars  and  wits  of  Europe  were  disputing 
the  relative  superiority  of  ancients  and  moderns.  Swift's 
"Battle  of  the  Books"  still  fives  as  a  sparkfing  record  of  it. 
The  modems,  having  the  advantage  of  being  afive,  de- 
cided the  result  in  their  own  favor,  but,  until  the  amazing 
influx  of  mechanical  and  physical  energies  after  1830, 
the  European  Universities  never  seemed  clear  on  the 
subject,  and  would  be  quite  fikely  to-day  to  reverse  the 
judgment  on  such  evidence  as  decided  the  case  in  1700. 
Only  an  unusually  well-informed  scholar  could  say  with 
certainty  what  the  German  or  French  Universities  think 
about  the  dogma  of  upward  evolution  in  the  year  1910, 
but  their  record  is  a  bad  one. 

On  the  dogma  of  Degradation  their  record  is  worse. 
If  the  human  race  is  to  depend  on  their  suffrages,  its  state 


246    THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE   DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

is  a  parlous  one.  For  a  thousand  years,  as  long  as  re- 
ligion held  sway,  teachers  were  not  merely  permitted  — 
they  were  obliged  —  to  condemn  the  human  race,  —  with 
rare  exceptions,  due  only  to  the  pity  of  God,  —  to  eternal 
degradation  following  the  near  end  of  the  world.  After 
1500  the  Church  very  slowly  lost  its  control  of  education, 
but  the  attitude  of  the  schools  changed  Uttle  in  regard 
to  human  history.  In  the  University  as  in  the  pulpit, 
the  standard  of  excellence  remained  among  the  Greeks, 
or  the  Romans,  or  the  Jews,  when  it  was  not  carried  back 
to  the  Garden  of  Eden.  In  the  nineteenth  century, 
every  one  knows  how  eagerly  the  pubUc  responded  to 
Wagner's  resuscitation  of  the  Middle  Ages.  By  most 
artists  modem  life  is  assumed  as  decadence.  What  is 
most  striking  of  all,  the  Universities  have  begun  again,  — 
within  fifty  years,  —  to  announce  through  their  astrono- 
mers the  approaching  demise  of  the  solar  system ;  through 
their  geologists,  the  death  of  the  earth  and  its  occupants ; 
through  their  physicists,  the  years  still  left  for  suns  to 
shine,  and  the  ultimate  destiny  of  the  celestial  universe 
to  become  atomic  dust  at  —270°  Centigrade;  while  their 
anthropologists  point  out  the  rapid  exhaustion  of  the 
race,  and  their  newspapers  day  by  day  proclaim  its  steady 
degradation.  What  makes  the  matter  infinitely  worse 
is  the  common,  daily  experience  that,  not  only  in  Uni- 


THE  SOLUTIONS  247 

versities  but  also  at  every  street-comer  of  every  European 
city,  on  every  half-holiday,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
men  are  taught  to  believe  with  delight,  that  society,  down 
to  the  present  day,  is  an  unnatural  abortion,  sustained 
by  perverted  illusions,  and  destined  to  inunediate  suicide. 
To  such  a  point  has  this  habit  of  teaching  gone,  that 
society  itself,  at  every  national  and  municipal  election, 
is  seen  physically  trembUng;  perplexed  and  confused; 
feeling  its  way ;  conscious  of  its  dangers ;  anxious  to  do 
right ;  ashamed  of  the  sores  which,  —  as  it  is  solemnly 
assured,  —  disfigure  its  surface,  and  of  the  hideous  tumors 
which,  —  as  it  is  incessantly  told,  —  are  ravaging  its 
vitals;  half -willing  to  be  sacrificed,  like  Iphigenia,  but 
timidly  shrinking  from  staking  the  fife,  described  as  so 
worthless,  on  the  gambler's  chance  of  winning  something 
less  wretched  in  an  unknown  beyond. 

Among  all  these  voluble  prophets,  the  historian  alone 
may  not  discuss  the  problem  for  respect  of  youth,  lest  he 
should  make  still  more  serious  an  issue  which  was  serious 
before  schools  began. 

If  the  silent,  half-conscious,  intuitive  faith  of  society 
could  be  fixed,  it  might  possibly  be  found  always  tending 
towards  belief  in  a  future  equilibrium  of  some  sort,  that 
should  end  in  becoming  stable;  an  idea  which  belongs 
to  mechanics,  and  was  probably  the  first  idea  that  nature 


248     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

taught  to  a  stone,  or  to  an  apple ;  to  a  lemur  or  an  ape ; 
before  teaching  it  to  Newton.  Unfortunately  for  society, 
the  physicists  again  abruptly  interfere,  Uke  Sancho 
Panza's  doctor,  by  earnest  protests  that,  if  one  physical 
law  exists  more  absolute  than  another,  it  is  the  law  that 
stable  equilibrium  is  death.  A  society  in  stable  equi- 
Ubriiun  is  —  by  definition  —  one  that  has  no  history 
and  wants  no  historians.  Thomson  and  Clausius  startled 
the  world  by  announcing  this  principle  in  1852 ;  but  the 
ants  and  bees  had  announced  it  some  millions  of  years 
before,  as  a  law  of  organisms,  and  it  may  have  been  es- 
tablished still  earlier,  in  more  convincing  form,  by  some 
of  the  caterpillars.  According  to  the  recent  doctrine  of 
Will  or  Intuition,  this  conclusion  was  the  first  logical  and 
ultimate  result  reached  in  the  evolution  of  organic  Ufe; 
but  the  professor  of  history  who  shall  accept  the  hymen- 
optera  and  lepidoptera  as  teachers  in  the  place  of  Kelvin 
and  Clausius,  will  probably  find  himself  in  the  same 
dilemma  as  before.  If  he  aims  at  carrying  his  audience 
with  him,  he  will  have  to  adopt  the  current  view  of  a 
society  rising  to  an  infinitely  high  potential  of  energy, 
and  there  remaining  in  equiUbrium,  the  only  view  which 
will  insure  him  the  sympathy  of  men,  as  well  as  — 
probably  —  of  caterpillars ;  but  if  he  wants  to  conciliate 
science^  he  will  have  to  deride  the  idea  of  a  stable  equi- 


THE  SOLUTIONS  249 

librium  of  high  potential,  and  insist  that  no  stable  social 
equilibrium  can  be  reached  except  by  degrading  social 
energies  to  a  level  where  they  can  fall  no  further,  and  do 
no  more  useful  work.  Perhaps  this  formula,  too,  may 
please  many  students,  whose  potential  of  vital  energy,  — 
or,  in  simpler  words,  whose  love  of  work,  —  is  less  archaic 
than  that  of  the  ants  and  bees ;  but  as  a  matter  of  prac- 
tical teaching,  —  as  a  mere  choice  between  technical 
formulas,  —  the  two  methods  result  in  the  same  dilemma 
for  the  old-fashioned  evolutionist  who  clings  to  his  ideals 
of  indefinite  progress.  Between  two  equiUbriums,  each 
mechanical,  and  each  insisting  that  history  is  at  an  end, 
lost  forever  in  the  ocean  of  statistics,  the  classical  Uni- 
versity teacher  of  history,  with  his  intuitions  of  free-will 
and  art,  can  exist  only  as  a  sporadic  survival  to  illustrate 
for  his  colleagues  the  workings  of  their  second  law  of 
thermodynamics. 

To  some  extent,  already,  he  finds  himself  actually  in 
this  awkward  situation  where  his  colleagues  betray  im- 
patience at  his  continued  existence.  With  singular 
unanimity,  the  polite,  but  embarrassed  authorities  agree 
that  history  is  not  a  science,  and  show  marked  imwUling- 
ness  to  permit  that  it  shall  ever,  with  their  consent,  be- 
come one.  Except  on  their  own  terms,  they  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  human  evolution,  and  their  terms 


250     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

commonly  require  that  they  should  treat  man  as  a 
creature  habitually  striving  to  attain  imaginary  ideals 
always  contrary  to  law.  His  Will  and  that  of  Nature 
have  been  constantly  at  strife,  and  continue  to  be  so, 
under  the  Baconian  philosophy  and  the  law  of  Energetik, 
as  decidedly  as  under  the  scholastic  philosophy  and  the 
Summa  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  Even  the  friendly 
Vitahst  treats  his  brother  Vitalists  with  candor  not  to 
be  mistaken  for  compliment,  because,  "in  the  history  of 
humanity  there  is  always  only  so  much  science  as  there 
is  no  History" ;  while  the  most  naif  of  all  the  historian's 
naivetes  is  his  favorite  notion  that  the  "understanding" 
of  a  problematic  humanity  can  be  furthered  by  adding 
to  it  a  more  problematic  phantom  of  Descent.  (Driesch, 
"  Naturbegriffe  und  Natururtheile."  Leipzig,  1904, 
p.  237.)  In  truth,  one  is  driven  to  admit  that  "the 
theory  of  descent,"  as  Von  Zittel  says,  "has  introduced 
new  ideas  into  descriptive  natural  history,  and  has  given 
it  a  higher  purpose ;  but  we  must  not  forget  that  it  is 
still  only  a  theory,  which  requires  to  be  proved." 

On  this  point,  the  professor  of  history  who  has  any 
smattering  of  special  training,  knows  all  that  he  needs 
to  know.  He  is  as  free  as  ever  he  was  to  go  on  compiling 
tables  of  dates,  or  editing,  or  reediting  so-called  "docu- 
ments," or  seeking  to  infuse  into  the  memories  of  his 


THE  SOLUTIONS  251 

students  a  sufficient  acquaintance  with  the  statute  Quia 
Emp tores.  He  has  fully  made  up  his  mind  either  for 
or  against  the  existence  of  any  philosophy  at  all,  as  well 
as  whether  he  is  required  to  lecture  on  such  a  philosophy 
in  case  it  does,  or  does  not,  exist.  Every  competent 
teacher  of  history  is  supposed,  justly  or  unjustly,  to  know 
his  Herbert  Spencer  and  Auguste  Comte,  even  if  not  his 
Lamprecht.  When  his  physiological  colleagues  ridicule 
his  aspirations  to  science,  the  professor  of  history  seems 
little  disposed  to  resent  their  attitude,  but  rather  en- 
courages it;  and  he  is  right,  if  they  are  right,  in  doing 
so ;  but,  none  the  less,  he  finds  himself  thus  placed,  for 
the  first  time  in  three  hundred  years,  face  to  face  with  a 
painful,  if  not  a  vital  problem.  In  one  respect  his  dilemma 
is  worse  than  in  the  sixteenth  century,  since  Bacon's 
physical  teaching  aimed  at  freeing  the  mind  from  a 
servitude,  while  the  law  of  Entropy  imposes  a  servitude 
on  all  energies,  including  the  mental.  The  degree  of 
freedom  steadily  and  rapidly  diminishes.  Without  rest, 
the  physicists  gently  push  history  down  the  decline,  as 
yet  scarcely  conscious,  which  they  are  certain  to  plot 
out  by  abscissae  and  ordinates  as  soon  as  they  can  fix 
and  agree  upon  a  sufficient  number  of  normal  variables, 
not  with  conscious  intention  but  by  unconscious  extension. 
Every  reader  of  current  hterature  knows  that  the  subject 


252  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

is  touched  by  half  the  books  he  reads,  and  that  the  most 
popular  are  the  most  outspoken.  Few  volumes  are  more 
widely  known  than  M.  Gustave  Le  Bon's  "Physiologie 
des  Foules"  (1895),  which  closes  with  the  following 
paragraph :  — 

"That  which  formed  a  people,  a  imity,  a  block,  ends 
by  becoming  an  agglomeration  of  individuals  without 
cohesion,  still  held  together  for  a  time  by  its  traditions 
and  institutions.  This  is  the  phase  when  men,  divided 
by  their  interests  and  aspirations,  but  no  longer  knowing 
how  to  govern  themselves,  ask  to  be  directed  in  their 
smallest  acts ;  and  when  the  State  exercises  its  absorbing 
influence.  With  the  definitive  loss  of  the  old  ideal,  the 
race  ends  by  entirely  losing  its  soul ;  it  becomes  nothing 
more  than  a  dust  of  isolated  individuals,  and  returns  to 
what  it  was  at  the  start,  —  a  crowd." 

Under  the  thinnest  veil  of  analogy  the  physicist- 
historian,  with  scientific  calmness,  condemns  our  actual 
society  as  he  condemns  the  sun;  for  the  "crowd"  which 
Gustave  Le  Bon  declares  to  be  the  end  of  social  evolution 
is  not  at  all  the  same  "crowd"  that  made  its  beginning, 
and  is  wholly  incapable  of  doing  useful  work.  In  the 
very  teeth  of  his  own  arguments  and  aims  Gustave  Le 
Bon  in  his  last  volume,  "La  Psychologie  Politique" 
(Paris,  1910),  affirms  that  this  process  has  already  reached 
its  critical  point :  — 


THE  SOLUTIONS  263 

"The  surest  symptom  of  the  decadence  threatemng 
us  is  the  general  enfeeblement  of  characters.  Numerous 
to-day  are  the  men  whose  energy  weakens,  especially 
among  the  choicest,  who  should  be  precisely  those  who 
need  it  most,  with  the  great  masters  who  are  placed  at 
the  head  of  nations,  as  well  as  with  the  small  chiefs  who 
govern  in  details,  indecision  and  weakness  become 
dominant.  .  .  .  Among  the  forces  of  which  man  dis- 
poses, in  order  to  struggle  successfully  against  the  powers 
which  constrain  him,  the  Will  was  always  the  most 
active.  ...  If  we  try  then  to  discover  why  so  many 
nations  perished  after  a  long  decline,  —  why  Rome 
formerly  queen  of  the  world,  ended  by  falling  under  the 
barbarian's  yoke,  we  find  that  these  profound  falls  had 
generally  the  same  cause,  —  enfeeblement  of  the  Will" 
(pp.  374-5).  "It  was  always  by  this  enfeeblement  of 
character,  and  not  by  that  of  intelligence  that  the  great 
peoples  disappeared  from  history"  (p.  295).  "It  would 
even  seem  as  though  to-day  the  dead  alone  gave  us  energy" 
(p.  372).  This  is  the  teaching  of  a  physicist,  but  the 
medical  authorities  on  psychic  disease  are  even  more 
outspoken,  frankly  asserting  as  a  fact,  on  which  their 
teaching  rests,  that  the  weakness  of  the  Will  is  the  great 
malady  of  our  epoch.  (Grasset,  "Id^es  Medicales." 
Paris,  1910,  p.  56.)    Among  these  medical  experts,  Dr. 


254  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

Forbes  Winslow  in  his  ''Recollections"  has  scandalized 
the  community  by  his  bluntness  :  —  ''On  comparing  the 
human  race  during  the  past  forty  years,"  he  says  (pp.  376- 
377),  "I  have  no  hesitation  in  stating  that  it  has  de- 
generated, and  is  still  progressing  in  a  downward  direction. 
We  are  gradually  approaching,  with  the  decadence  of 
youth,  a  near  proximity  to  a  nation  of  madmen.  By 
comparing  the  lunacy  statistics  of  1809  with  those  of 
1909,  ...  an  insane  world  is  looked  forward  to  by  me 
with  a  certainty  in  the  not  far  distant  future."  In  fact, 
the  statistics  show  that  in  1809  there  was  one  lunatic  in 
every  418  of  the  total  population  of  England  and  Wales ; 
in  1909,  there  was  one  in  every  278;  so  that  in  three 
hundred  years  one  half  the  population  should  be  insane 
or  idiotic.  "These  are  facts!"  continues  Dr.  Forbes 
Winslow;  "they  cannot  in  any  way  be  challenged." 

Gustave  Le  Bon  is  himself  a  physicist  of  wide  renown, 
but  he  is  remarkable  also  as  director  of  the  "  Bibliotheque 
de  Philosophie  Scientifique,"  the  best  known  of  all  recent 
attempts  to  lighten  the  load  of  technical  instruction  and 
of  scientific  baggage.  Among  the  most  recent  of  these 
admirable  volumes  is  one  on  "Degradation"  (Paris, 
November,  1908),  by  M.  Bernhard  Brunhes,  whose 
position  as  Director  of  the  Observatory  of  the  Puy  de 
D6me  guarantees  his  competence  to  narrate  the  story. 


THE  SOLUTIONS  255 

In  one  or  two  paragraphs,  with  the  lucidity  which  so 
often  distinguishes  French  thought  from  that  of  some 
other  races,  M.  Brunhes  summarizes  the  values  of  the 
two  philosophies  of  history :  — 

"The  preceding  remarks  give  the  key  to  the  apparent 
opposition  which  exists  between  the  doctrine  of  Evolu- 
tion and  the  principle  of  Degradation  of  energy.  Physical 
science  presents  to  us  a  world  which  is  unceasingly  wear- 
ing itself  out.  A  philosophy  which  claims  to  derive  sup- 
port from  biology,  paints  complacently,  on  the  contrary, 
a  world  steadily  improving,  in  which  physiological  life 
goes  on  always  growing  perfect  to  the  point  of  reaching 
full  consciousness  of  itself  in  man,  and  where  no  limit 
seems  imposed  on  eternal  progress.  Observe  that  this 
second  idea,  —  of  indefinite  progress,  —  has  furnished 
much  more  material  than  the  first,  for  hterary  develop- 
ment! This  is  no  doubt  because  the  scientific  facts  on 
which  it  is  constructed  lend  themselves  to  vulgarization 
far  more  easily  than  the  scientific  facts  whose  combination 
forms  the  principle  of  Camot.  From  our  point  of  view 
the  principle  of  Degradation  of  energy  would  prove  noth- 
ing against  the  fact  of  Evolution.  The  progressive  trans- 
formation of  species,  the  realization  of  more  perfect 
organisms,  contain  nothing  contrary  to  the  idea  of  the 
constant  loss  of  useful  energy.    Only  the  vast  and  gran- 


256     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

diose  conceptions  of  imaginative  philosophers  who  erect 
into  an  absolute  principle  the  law  of  'universal  progress,' 
could  no  longer  hold  against  one  of  the  most  fundamental 
ideas  that  physics  reveals  to  us.  On  one  side,  therefore, 
the  world  wears  out ;  on  another  side  the  appearance  on 
earth  of  living  beings  more  and  more  elevated,  and,  — 
in  a  slightly  different  order  of  ideas,  —  the  development 
of  civilization  in  human  society,  undoubtedly  give  the 
impression  of  a  progress  and  a  gain"  (p.  193). 

This,  then,  is  the  extreme  limit  of  the  physicists'  con- 
cessions. If  a  compromise  is  to  be  made,  it  must  rest 
there.  The  degradationist  can  so  far  ameliorate  the 
immediate  rigor  of  his  law  as  to  admit  that  degradation 
of  energy  may  create,  or  convey,  an  impression  of  progress 
and  gain ;  but  if  the  evolutionist  presses  the  inquiry 
further,  and  asks  where  this  proposed  compromise  will 
lead  him  as  a  teacher  of  young  men,  —  what  futiu^e  reality 
lies  behind  the  impression  of  progress,  —  what  amount 
of  illusion  is  to  be  reckoned  as  an  independent  variable 
in  the  formula  of  gain,  —  the  degradationist  replies,  quite 
candidly  and  honestly,  that  this  impression  of  gain  is 
derived  from  an  impression  of  Order  due  to  the  levelling 
of  energies ;  but  that  the  impression  of  Order  is  an  illu- 
sion consequent  on  the  dissolution  of  the  higher  Order 
which  had  supphed,  by  lowering  its  inequalities,  all  the 


THE  SOLUTIONS  257 

useful  energies  that  caused  progress.  The  reality  be- 
hind the  illusion,  is,  therefore,  absence  of  the  power  to 
do  useful  work,  —  or  what  man  knows  in  his  finite 
sensibihties  as  death :  — 

"Thus  Order  in  the  material  universe  would  be  the 
mark  of  utiUty  and  the  measure  of  value ;  and  this  Order, 
far  from  being  spontaneous,  would  tend  constantly  to 
destroy  itself.  Yet  the  Disorder  towards  which  a  col- 
lection of  molecules  moves,  is  in  no  respect  the  initial 
chaos  rich  in  differences  and  inequaUties  that  generate  use- 
ful energies;  on  the  contrary  it  is  the  average  mean  of 
equality  and  homogeneity  in  absolute  want  of  coordina- 
tion" (p.  53). 

Perhaps  an  instructor  needs  a  memory  extending  over 
sixty  years  in  order  to  measm-e  the  revolution  in  thought 
which  such  teaching  implies.  Every  right-minded  Uni- 
versity Professor  of  1850  dismissed  the  ideas  of  Kelvin 
as  he  did  those  of  Malthus,  Karl  Marx,  and  Schopenhauer, 
as  fantastic.  They  shocked  him  partly  for  their  extrava- 
gance but  chiefly  for  what  he  regarded  as  their  destructive 
pessimism.  In  1910  an  American  professor  who  should 
try  to  get  below  the  surface  of  thought  in  Germany, 
Italy,  France,  or  even  in  England,  would  probably  in- 
cline to  the  conclusion  that  Schopenhauer  may  be  re- 
garded as  an  optimist.    In  reality  pessimists  and  op- 


258     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

timists  have  united  on  a  system  of  science  which  makes 
pessimism  the  logical  foundation  of  optimism.  History 
is  the  victim  of  both.  Let  any  young  student  take  up 
the  last  German  book  on  Biology  that  happens  to  fall 
under  his  eyes.  Within  the  first  hundred  pages  he  is 
fairly  sure  to  come  upon  some  assertion  or  assumption 
of  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics  in  its  dogmatic 
form:  — 

"The  Energetik  of  the  hving  organism  consists,  then, 
in  the  last  analysis,  in  the  fact  that  the  organism,  when 
left  to  itself,  tends  in  the  direction  of  a  stable  equilibrium 
under  the  surrender  of  energy  to  the  outer  world.  The 
reaching  of  the  stable  equihbrium,  —  even  the  mere  ap- 
proach to  it,  —  means  death.  In  this  respect  the  or- 
ganism acts  Hke  a  clock  that  has  run  down."  (Reinke, 
"Einleitung  in  die  theoretische  Biologic,"  p.  152.) 

In  1852,  Thomson  contented  himself  by  saying  that  a 
restoration  of  energy  is  "probably"  never  effected  by 
organized  matter.  In  1910,  there  is  nothing  "probable" 
about  it ;  the  fact  has  become  an  axiom  of  biology.  In 
1852,  any  University  professor  would  have  answered  this 
quotation  by  the  dry  remark  that  society  was  not  an 
organism,  and  that  history  was  not  a  science,  since  it 
could  not  be  treated  mathematically.  To-day,  M.  Bern- 
hard  Brunhes  seems  to  feel  no  doubt  that  society  is  an 


THE  SOLUTIONS  259 

organism,  and  the  most  marked  tendency  of  recent  his- 
torians is  to  reassert  in  almost  dogmatic  terms  the  his- 
torical fact  that  man  is  the  creature,  not  the  creator,  of 
the  social  organism.  Among  hving  historians  Eduard 
Meyer  stands  near  the  head,  and  his  introduction  begins 
with  the  axiom  that  "the  whole  mental  development  of 
mankind  has,  for  its  preliminary  assumption,  the  existence 
of  separate  social  groups." 

''Above  all,  the  weightiest  instrument  of  men.  Speech 
—  which  first  makes  the  Man,  and  first  makes  possible 
the  growth  of  our  systematic  Thought,  —  has  not  been 
a  casual  creation  of  individuals  or  of  the  relation  between 
parents  and  children,  but  has  grown  out  of  the  common 
needs  of  equals,  bound  together  by  common  interests 
and  regulated  intercourse.  But  even  the  invention  of 
tools,  such  as  the  acquisition  of  Fire,  the  taming  of  the 
domestic  Animals,  the  settlement  in  Residence,  and  so 
on,  are  possible  only  within  a  group;  or  at  least  have 
meaning  only  so  far  as  what  has  first  and  immediately 
benefited  one,  becomes  the  property  of  the  whole  com- 
munity. That,  in  general,  Manners,  Law,  Religion,  and 
all  such  moral  properties  can  have  arisen  only  in  such 
relations,  needs  no  discussion.  Thus  the  organization  in 
such  ties  (Hordes,  Stocks)  which  we  meet  in  experience 
everywhere  we  get  to  know  man  is  not  merely  just  as 


260     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

old,  but  is  far  older  than  the  Man ;  it  is  the  preliminary 
condition  of  the  existence  of  the  human  race  altogether." 
(Einleitung,  7,  8.) 

Even  the  child  is  the  creature  of  the  State  Organism, 
not  of  the  Family.  ''The  generation  and  bringing  up 
of  the  descendants  lies  much  nearer  the  heart  of  the 
Social  organism  than  of  the  individual  man,  for  to  him 
his  own  hfe  is  his  chief  interest,  while  to  every  social 
group  the  actual  hving  members  are  wholly  irrelevant 
in  themselves,  and  only  the  momentary  representatives 
of  the  chain  of  generations.  .  .  .  Hence  the  com- 
pulsion to  marriage,  and  the  care  for  the  birth  and  bring- 
ing up  of  a  posterity ;  hence  also  the  decision  whether  a 
new-born  child  shall  hve  and  become  a  member  of  the 
society  is  for  the  most  part  not  left  to  choice  of  the  parent, 
but  falls  to  the  kin  or  to  some  other  recognized  public 
authority"  (p.  20).  In  short,  the  social  Organism,  in  the 
recent  views  of  history,  is  the  cause,  creator,  and  end  of  the 
Man,  who  exists  only  as  a  passing  representative  of  it, 
without  rights  or  functions  except  what  it  imposes.  As 
an  Organism  society  has  always  been  peculiarly  subject 
to  degradation  of  Energy,  and  alike  the  historians  and 
the  physicists  invariably  stretch  Kelvin's  law  over  all 
organized  matter  whatever.  Instead  of  being  a  mere 
convenience  in  treatment,  the  law  is  very  rapidly  be- 


THE  SOLUTIONS  261 

coming  a  dogma  of  absolute  Truth.  As  long  as  the  theory 
of  Degradation,  —  as  of  Evolution,  —  was  only  one  of 
the  convenient  tools  of  science,  the  sociologist  had  no 
just  cause  for  complaint.  Every  science,  —  and  mathe- 
matics first  of  all,  —  uses  what  tools  it  Ukes.  The  Pro- 
fessor of  Physics  is  not  teaching  Ethics;  he  is  training 
young  men  to  handle  concrete  energy  in  one  or  more  of 
its  many  forms,  and  he  has  no  choice  but  to  use  the  most 
convenient  formulas.  Unfortunately  the  formula  most 
convenient  for  him  is  not  at  all  convenient  for  his  col- 
leagues in  sociology  and  history,  without  pressing  the 
inquiry  further,  into  more  intimate  branches  of  practice 
like  medicine,  jurisprudence,  and  poUtics.  If  the  entire 
universe,  in  every  variety  of  active  energy,  organic  and 
inorganic,  human  or  divine,  is  to  be  treated  as  clock- 
work that  is  running  down,  society  can  hardly  go  on  ignor- 
ing the  fact  forever.  Hitherto  it  has  often  happened 
that  two  systems  of  education,  Uke  the  Scholastic  and 
Baconian,  could  exist  side  by  side  for  centuries,  —  as 
they  exist  still,  —  in  adjoining  schools  and  universities, 
by  no  more  scientific  device  than  that  of  shutting  their 
eyes  to  each  other;  but  the  universe  has  been  terribly 
narrowed  by  thermodynamics.  Already  History  and 
Sociology  gasp  for  breath. 
The  department  of  history  needs  to  concert  with  the 


262     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

departments  of  biology,  sociology,  and  psychology  some 
common  formula  or  figure  to  serve  their  students  as  a 
working  model  for  their  study  of  the  vital  energies ;  and 
this  figure  must  be  brought  into  accord  with  the  figures 
or  formulas  used  by  the  department  of  physics  and  me- 
chanics to  serve  their  students  as  models  for  the  working 
of  physico-chemical  and  mechanical  energies.  Without 
the  adhesion  of  physicists,  the  model  would  cause  greater 
scandal  than  though  the  contradictions  were  silently 
ignored  as  now;  but  the  biologists,  —  or,  at  least,  the 
branches  of  science  concerned  with  humanity,  —  will 
find  great  difficulty  in  agreeing  on  any  formula  which 
does  not  require  from  physics  the  abandonment,  in  part, 
of  the  second  law  of  thermodynamics.  The  mere  formal 
exception  of  Reason  from  the  express  operation  of  the 
law,  as  a  matter  of  teaching  in  the  workshop,  is  not 
enough.  Either  the  law  must  be  abandoned  in  respect 
to  Vital  Energy  altogether,  or  Vital  Energy  must  abandon 
Reason  altogether  as  one  of  its  forms,  and  return  to  the 
old  dilemma  of  Descartes. 

Meanwhile  nothing  prevents  each  instructor  from  aim- 
ing to  unite  with  each  of  his  colleagues  in  some  sort  of 
approach  to  a  common  understanding  about  the  first 
principle  of  instruction;  if  each  University  solves  the 
problem  to  its  own  satisfaction,  the  problem  is,  in  so  far, 


THE  SOLUTIONS  263 

solved  for  the  whole ;  and  nothing  need  hamper  the  effort 
of  the  Universities  to  carry  the  process  further,  if  it  prom- 
ises advantage.  If  the  physicists  and  physico-chemists 
can  at  last  find  their  way  to  an  arrangement  that  would 
satisfy  the  sociologists  and  historians,  the  problem  would 
be  wholly  solved.  Such  a  complete  solution  seems  not 
impossible ;  but  at  present,  —  for  the  moment,  —  as  the 
stream  runs,  —  it  also  seems,  to  an  impartial  bystander, 
to  call  for  the  aid  of  another  Newton. 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY 

1909 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO    HISTORY 

IN  1876-1878  Willard  Gibbs,  Professor  of  Mathematical 
Physics  at  Yale,  pubhshed  in  the  Transactions  of 
the  Connecticut  Academy  his  famous  memoir  on  the 
''Equilibrium  of  Heterogeneous  Substances,"  containing 
the  short  chapter  ''On  Existent  Phases  of  Matter," 
which,  in  the  hands  of  the  Dutch  chemists,  became, 
some  ten  years  afterwards,  a  means  of  greatly  extending 
the  science  of  Static  Chemistry.  Although  the  name  of 
Willard  Gibbs  is  probably  to-day  the  highest  in  scientific 
fame  of  all  Americans  since  Benjamin  Franklin,  his  Rule 
of  Phases  defies  translation  into  Uterary  language.  The 
mathematical  formulas  in  which  he  hid  it  were  with 
difficulty  intelligible  to  the  chemists  themselves,  and  are 
quite  unintelHgible  to  an  unmathematical  pubhc,  while 
the  sense  in  which  the  word  Phase  was  used,  confused 
its  meaning  to  a  degree  that  alters  its  values,  and  reduces 
it  to  a  chemical  relation.  Willard  Gibbs  helped  to  change 
the  face  of  science,  but  his  Phase  was  not  the  Phase  of 
History. 

As  he  used  it,  the  word  meant  Equihbrium,  which  is 
in  fact  the  ordinary  sense  attached  to  it,  but  his  equilib- 

267 


268     THE  DEaRADATION  OP  THE  DEMOCl^Af  IC  DOGMA 

rium  was  limited  to  a  few  component  parts.  Ice,  water, 
and  water-vapor  were  three  phases  of  a  single  substance, 
under  dififerent  conditions  of  temperature  and  pressure; 
but  if  another  element  were  added,  —  if  one  took  sea- 
water,  for  instance,  —  the  number  of  phases  was  increased 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  components.  The  chemical 
phase  thus  became  a  distinct  physical  section  of  a  solution, 
and  as  many  sections  existed  as  there  were  independent 
components. 

The  common  idea  of  phase  is  that  of  the  solution  itself, 
as  when  salt  is  dissolved  in  water.  It  is  the  whole  equi- 
librium or  state  of  apparent  rest.  It  means,  perhaps, 
when  used  of  movement,  a  variance  of  direction,  but  it 
seems  not  to  have  been  so  much  employed  to  indicate  a 
mere  change  in  speed.  Yet  the  word  would  apply  in 
Uterature  as  well  as  it  does  in  physical  chemistry  to  the 
three  stages  of  equihbrium:  ice,  water,  and  steam. 
Where  only  one  component  is  concerned,  the  Rule  of 
Phase  is  the  same  for  chemistry  as  for  general  usage.  A 
change  of  phase,  in  all  cases,  means  a  change  of  equihb- 
riimi. 

Whether  the  equilibrium  or  phase  is  temporary  or 
permanent,  —  whether  the  change  is  rapid  or  slow,  — 
whether  the  force  at  work  for  the  purpose  is  a  liquid 
solvent,  or  heat,  or  a  physical  attraction  or  repulsion,  — 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      269 

the  interest  of  the  equihbrium  lies  in  its  relations,  and  the 
object  of  study  is  the  behavior  of  each  group  under  new 
relations.  Chemists  and  physicists  have  turned  their 
studies,  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  past,  to  these  relations, 
and  the  various  conditions  of  temperature,  pressure,  and 
volume  have  become  more  important  than  the  atoms  and 
molecules  themselves,  while  new  processes,  —  osmosis, 
electrolysis,  magnetic  action,  —  have  made  a  new  world 
that  is  slowly  taking  the  place  of  the  world  as  it  existed 
fifty  years  ago;  though  as  yet  the  old  curriculimi  of 
thought  has  been  hardly  touched  by  the  change. 

The  new  field  can  be  entered  only  by  timid  groping 
for  its  limits,  and  with  certainty  of  constant  error; 
but  in  order  to  enter  it  at  all,  one  must  begin  by  following 
the  lines  given  by  physical  science.  If  the  Rule  of  Phase 
is  to  serve  for  clue,  the  first  analogy  which  imposes  itself 
as  the  starting-point  for  experiment  is  the  law  of  solutions, 
which  seems  to  lie  on  the  horizon  of  science  as  the  latest 
and  largest  of  possible  generahzations.  As  science 
touches  every  material  or  immaterial  substance,  each  in 
its  turn  dissolves,  until  the  ether  itself  becomes  an  ocean 
of  discontinuous  particles. 

A  solution  is  defined  as  a  homogeneous  mixture,  which 
can  pass  through  continuous  variations  of  composition 
within  the  limits  that  define  its  existence.    Solids,  as 


270     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

we  all  know,  may  be  dissolved,  but  we  do  not  all  realize 
that  liquids  and  gases  may  also  be  dissolved,  or  that  a 
change  in  composition  must  accompany  a  change  of  phase. 
As  early  as  1662,  Isaac  Voss,  in  his  work,  "De  Lucis 
Natura,"  on  the  Nature  of  Light,  defined  Heat  as  ''actus 
dissolvens  corpora,"  the  solvent  of  material  bodies; 
and  in  1870,  the  French  chemist  Rosenstiehl  published  a 
paper  in  the  Comptes  Rendues  of  the  French  Academy 
(vol.  LXX)  suggesting  that  any  gas  might  be  likened  to  a 
body  dissolved  in  the  medium  of  the  universal  solvent, 
the  ether.  Reversing  the  theory,  the  English  and  Dutch 
physicists  have  solidified  every  gas,  including  even  helium. 
The  solvent  has  been  suggested  or  found  for  every  form 
of  matter,  even  the  most  subtle,  until  it  trembles  on  the 
verge  of  the  ether  itself;  and  a  by-stander,  who  is  in- 
terested in  watching  the  extension  of  this  new  synthesis, 
cannot  help  asking  himself  where  it  can  find  a  Umit.  If 
every  solid  is  soluble  into  a  liquid,  and  every  liquid  into 
a  gas,  and  every  gas  into  corpuscles  which  vanish  in  an 
ocean  of  ether,  —  if  nothing  remains  of  energy  itself 
except  potential  motion  in  absolute  space,  —  where  can 
scienciB  stop  in  the  application  of  this  fecund  idea? 

Where  it  can  stop  is  its  own  affair,  dependent  on  its 
own  will  or  convenience;  but  where  it  must  stop  is  a 
larger  question  that  interests  philosophy.     There  seems  to 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      271 

be  no  reason  for  insisting  that  it  must  necessarily  stop 
anjrwhere  within  the  region  of  experience.  Certainly  it 
cannot  stop  with  static  electricity,  which  is  itself  more 
obviously  a  mere  phase  than  water-vapor.  The  physicists 
cannot  conceive  it  without  conceiving  something  more 
universal  behind  or  above  it.  The  logic  of  former 
thought,  in  its  classic  simphcity,  would  have  taken  for 
granted  that  electricity  must  be  capable  of  reduction  to  a 
soUd,  —  that  it  can  be  frozen,  —  and  that  it  must  also 
be  soluble  in  ether.  One  has  learned  to  distrust  logic, 
and  to  expect  contradiction  from  nature,  but  we  cannot 
easily  prevent  thought  from  behaving  as  though  sequence 
were  probable  until  the  contrary  becomes  still  more 
probable;  and  the  mind  insists  on  asking  what  would 
happen  if,  in  the  absence  of  known  limit,  every  substance 
that  falls  within  human  experience  should  be  soluble 
successively  in  a  more  volatile  substance,  or  under  more 
volatile  conditions.  Supposing  the  mechanical  theories  of 
matter  to  be  carried  out  as  far  as  experience  warrants,  — 
supposing  each  centre  of  motion  capable  of  solution  in  a  less 
condensed  motion, — supposing  every  vortex-centre  treated 
as  a  phase  or  stage  of  equilibrium  which  passes,  more  or 
less  abruptly,  into  another  phase,  under  changed  condi- 
tions ;  must  all  motion  merge  at  last  into  ultimate  static 
energy  existing  only  as  potential  force  in  absolute  space? 


272     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  reply  of  the  physicist  is  very  simple  as  a  formula  of 
experiment ;  he  can  carry  his  theory  no  further  than  he  can 
carry  his  experience;  but  how  far  does  he,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  carry  his  habitual,  ordinary  experience?  Time 
was  when  experiment  stopped  with  matter  perceptible  to 
the  senses ;  but  the  chemist  long  ago  lost  sight  of  matter 
so  Umited.  Vehemently  resisting,  he  had  been  dragged 
into  regions  where  supersensual  forces  alone  had  play. 
Very  unwilUngly,  after  fifty  years  of  struggle,  chemists 
had  been  forced  to  admit  the  existence  of  inconceivable  and 
incredible  substances,  and  their  convulsive  efforts  to  make 
these  substances  appear  comprehensible  had  measured 
the  strain  on  their  thought.  Static  electricity  already  lay 
beyond  the  legitimate  domain  of  sensual  science,  while 
beyond  static  electricity  lay  a  vast  supersensual  ocean 
roughly  called  the  ether  which  the  physicists  and  chemists, 
on  their  old  principles,  were  debarred  from  entering  at  all, 
and  had  to  be  dragged  into,  by  Faraday  and  his  school. 
Beyond  the  ether,  again,  lay  a  vast  region,  known  to  them 
as  the  only  substance  which  they  knew  or  could  know  — 
their  own  thought, — ^which  they  positively  refused  to  touch. 

Yet  the  physicists  here,  too,  were  helpless  to  escape  the 
step,  for  where  they  refused  to  go  as  experimenters,  they 
had  to  go  as  mathematicians.  Without  the  higher 
mathematics  they  could  no  longer  move,  but  with  the 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      273 

higher  mathematics,  metaphysics  began.  There  the 
restraints  of  physics  did  not  exist.  In  the  mathematical 
order,  infinity  became  the  invariable  field  of  action,  and 
not  only  did  the  mathematician  deal  habitually  and 
directly  with  all  sorts  of  infinities,  but  he  also  built  up 
hyper-infinites,  if  he  Uked,  or  hyper-spaces,  or  infinite 
hierarchies  of  hyper-space.  The  true  mathematician 
drew  breath  only  in  the  hyper-space  of  Thought;  he 
could  exist  only  by  assuming  that  all  phases  of  material 
motion  merged  in  the  last  conceivable  phase  of  immaterial 
motion  —  pure  mathematical  thought. 

The  physicist,  in  self-defence,  though  he  may  not 
deny,  prefers  to  ignore  this  rigorous  consequence  of  his 
own  principles,  as  he  refused  for  many  years  to  admit  the 
consequences  of  Faraday's  experiments ;  but  at  least  he 
can  surely  rely  upon  this  admission  being  the  last  he  will 
ever  be  called  upon  to  make.  No  phase  of  hyper-sub- 
stance more  subtle  than  thought  can  ever  be  conceived, 
since  it  could  exist  only  as  his  own  thought  returning  into 
itself.  Possibly,  in  the  inconceivable  domains  of  abstrac- 
tion, the  ultimate  substance  may  show  other  sides  or 
extensions,  but  to  man  it  can  be  known  only  as  hyper- 
thought,  —  the  region  of  pure  mathematics  and  meta- 
physics, —  the  last  and  universal  solvent. 

There  even  mathematics  must  stop.    Motion  itself 


274     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

ended;  even  thought  became  merely  potential  in  this 
final  solution.  The  hierarchy  of  phases  was  complete. 
Each  phase,  measured  by  its  rapidity  of  vibration, 
arranged  itself  in  the  physical  sequence  famiUar  to 
physicists,  such  as  that  sketched  by  Stoney  in  his  well- 
known  memoirs  of  1885, 1890,  and  1899,  and  as  reasonable 
as  the  solar  spectrum.  The  hierarchy  rose  in  an  order 
more  or  less  demonstrable,  from :  — 

1.  The  Solids,  among  which  the  Rule  of  Phases  offers 
ice  as  a  convenient  example  of  its  first  phase,  because 
under  a  familiar  change  of  temperature  it  passes  instantly 
into  its  next  phase :  — 

2.  The  Fluid,  or  water,  which  by  a  further  change 
of  temperature  transforms  itself  suddenly  into  the  third 
phase :  — 

3.  Vapor,  or  gas,  which  has  laws  and  habits  of  its  own 
forming  the  chief  subject  of  chemical  study  upon  the 
molecule  and  the  atom.  Thus  far,  each  phase  falls  within 
the  range  of  human  sense,  but  the  gases,  under  new  condi- 
tions, seem  to  resolve  themselves  into  a  fourth  phase :  — 

4.  The  Electron  or  Electricity,  which  is  not  within  the 
range  of  any  sense  except  when  set  in  motion.  Another 
form  of  the  same  phase  is  Magnetism ;  and  some  psy- 
chologists have  tried  to  bring  animal  consciousness  or 
thought   into    relation   with    electro-magnetism,    which 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      275 

would  be  very  convenient  for  scientific  purposes.  The 
most  prolonged  and  painful  effort  of  the  greatest  geniuses 
has  not  yet  succeeded  in  uniting  Electricity  with  Magnet- 
ism, much  less  with  Mind,  but  all  show  the  strongest 
signs  of  a  conmion  origin  in  the  next  phase  of  un- 
differentiated energy  or  energies  called :  — 

5.  The  Ether,  endowed  with  quaUties  which  are  not 
so  much  substantial  or  material  as  they  are  concepts 
of  thought,  —  self-contradictions  in  experience.  Very 
slowly  and  unwillingly  have  the  scientists  yielded  to  the 
necessity  of  admitting  that  this  form  of  potential  energy 
—  this  undifferentiated  substance  supporting  matter  and 
mind  ahke  —  exists,  but  it  now  forms  the  foundation  of 
physics,  and  in  it  both  mind  and  matter  merge.  Yet  even 
this  semi-sensual,  semi-concrete,  inconceivable  complex  of 
possibiUties,  the  agent  or  home  of  infinite  and  instan- 
taneous motion  Hke  gravitation,  —  infinitely  rigid  and 
infinitely  elastic  at  once,  —  is  sohd  and  concrete  com- 
pared with  its  following  phase :  — 

6.  Space,  knowable  only  as  a  concept  of  extension,  a 
thought,  a  mathematical  field  of  speculation,  and  yet 
almost  the  only  concrete  certainty  of  man's  consciousness. 
Space  can  be  conceived  as  a  phase  of  potential  strains  or 
disturbances  of  equilibrium,  but  whether  studied  as  static 
substance  or  substance  in  motion,  it  must  be  endowed  with 


276  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

an  infinite  possibility  of  strain.  That  which  is  infinitely 
formless  must  produce  form.  That  which  is  only  in- 
telligible as  a  thought,  must  have  a  power  of  self-induction 
or  disturbance  that  can  generate  motion. 

7.  Finally,  the  last  phase  conceivable  is  that  which 
lies  beyond  motion  altogether  as  Hyper-space,  knowable 
only  as  Hyper-thought,  or  pure  mathematics,  which, 
whether  a  subjective  idea  or  an  objective  theme,  is  the 
only  phase  that  man  can  certainly  know  and  about  which 
he  can  be  sure.  Whether  he  can  know  it  from  more  than 
one  side,  or  otherwise  than  as  his  own  self-consciousness, 
or  whether  he  can  ever  reach  higher  phases  by  developing 
higher  powers,  is  a  matter  for  mathematicians  to  decide ; 
but,  even  after  reducing  it  to  pure  negation,  it  must  still 
possess,  in  the  abstractions  of  ultimate  and  infinite  equi- 
hbrium,  the  capacity  for  self -disturbance ;  it  cannot  be 
absolutely  dead. 

The  Rule  of  Phases  lends  itself  to  mathematical  treat- 
ment, and  the  rule  of  science  which  is  best  suited  to 
mathematical  treatment  will  always  be  favored  by 
physicists,  other  merits  being  equal.  Though  the  terms 
be  as  general  as  those  of  Willard  Gibbs'  formulas,  if  they 
hold  good  for  every  canonical  system  they  will  be  adopted. 
The  Rule  itself  assumes  the  general  fact,  ascertained  by 
experiment  or  arbitrarily  taken  as  starting  point,  that 


THE  RULE!  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      277 

every  equiUbrium,  or  phase,  begins  and  ends  with  what  is 
called  a  critical  point,  at  which,  under  a  given  change  of 
temperature  or  pressure,  a  mutation  occurs  into  another 
phase ;  and  that  this  passage  from  one  to  the  other  can  al- 
ways be  expressed  mathematically.  The  time  required  for 
establishing  a  new  equiUbrium  varies  with  the  nature  or 
conditions  of  the  substance,  and  is  sometimes  very  long 
in  the  case  of  soUds,  but  the  formula  does  not  vary. 

In  chemistry  the  Rule  of  Phase  apphed  only  to  material 
substances,  but  in  physics  no  such  restriction  exists. 
Down  to  the  moment  of  Hertz's  experiments  in  1887  and 
1888,  common-sense  vigorously  rejected  the  idea  that 
material  substance  could  be  reduced  to  immaterial 
energy,  but  this  resistance  had  to  be  abandoned  with  the 
acceptance  of  magneto-electricity  and  ether,  both  of  which 
were  as  immaterial  as  thought  itself;  and  the  surrender 
became  final  with  the  discovery  of  radium,  which  brought 
the  mutation  of  matter  imder  the  closest  direct  obser- 
vation. Thenceforward  nothing  prevented  the  mathe- 
matical physicist  from  assuming  the  existence  of  as  many 
phases,  and  calculating  the  values  of  as  many  mutations, 
as  he  liked,  up  to  the  last  thinkable  stage  of  hyper- 
thought  and  hyperspace  which  he  knew  as  pure  mathe- 
matics, and  in  which  all  motion,  all  relation,  and  all  form, 
were  merged. 


278     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  laws  governing  potential  strains  and  stresses  in  an 
ideal  equilibrium  infinitely  near  perfection,  or  the  volatility 
of  an  ideal  substance  infinitely  near  a  perfect  rest,  or  the 
possibilities  of  self-induction  in  an  infinitely  attenuated 
substance,  may  be  left  to  mathematics  for  solution ;  but 
the  ether,  with  its  equally  contradictory  qualities,  is 
admitted  to  exist ;  it  is  a  real  substance  —  or  series  of 
substances,  —  objective  and  undeniable  as  a  granite  rock. 
It  is  an  equilibrium,  a  phase,  with  laws  of  its  own  which 
are  not  the  laws  of  Newtonian  mechanics;  it  requires 
new  methods,  perhaps  new  mind ;  but,  as  yet,  the  physi- 
cist has  found  no  reason  to  exclude  it  from  the  sequence 
of  substances.  The  dividing  line  between  static  electricity 
and  ether  is  hardly  so  sharp  as  that  between  any  of  the 
earlier  phases,  —  solid,  fluid,  gaseous,  or  electric. 

The  physicist  has  been  reluctantly  coerced  into  this 
concession,  and  if  he  had  been  also  a  psychologist  he 
would  have  been  equally  driven,  imder  the  old  laws  of 
association  formerly  known  as  logic,  to  admit  that  what 
he  conceded  to  motion  in  its  phase  as  matter,  he  must 
concede  to  motion  in  its  form  as  mind.  Without  this 
extension,  any  new  theory  of  the  universe  based  on 
mechanics  must  be  as  ill-balanced  as  the  old.  Whatever 
dogmatic  confidence  the  mechanist  had  professed  in  his 
mechanical  theory  of  the  universe,  his  own  mind  had 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      279 

always  betrayed  an  uneasy  protest  against  being  omitted 
from  its  own  mechanical  creation.  This  neglect  involved 
not  only  a  total  indifference  to  its  claim  to  exist  as  a 
material  —  or  immaterial  —  vibration,  although  such  mere 
kinetic  movement  was  granted  in  theory  to  every  other 
substance  it  knew ;  but  it  ignored  also  the  higher  claim, 
which  was  implied  in  its  own  definition,  that  it  existed 
as  the  sole  source  of  Direction,  or  Form,  without  which 
all  mechanical  systems  must  remain  forever  as  chaotic  as 
they  show  themselves  in  a  thousand  nebulae.  The  matter 
of  Direction  was  more  vital  to  science  than  all  kinematics 
together.  The  question  how  order  could  have  got  into 
the  universe  at  all  was  the  chief  object  of  human  thought 
since  thought  existed ;  and  order,  —  to  use  the  expressive 
figure  of  Rudolph  Goldscheid,  —  was  but  Direction  re- 
garded as  stationary,  Uke  a  frozen  waterfall.  The  sum  of 
motion  without  direction  is  zero,  as  in  the  motion  of  a 
kinetic  gas  where  only  Clerk  Maxwell's  demon  of  Thought 
could  create  a  value.  Possibly,  in  the  chances  of  infinite 
time  and  space,  the  law  of  probabilities  might  assert 
that,  sooner  or  later,  some  volume  of  kinetic  motion  must 
end  in  the  accident  of  Direction,  but  no  such  accident  has 
yet  affected  the  gases,  or  imposed  a  general  law  on  the 
visible  universe.  Down  to  our  day  Vibration  and 
Direction  remain  as  different  as  Matter  and  Mind.     Lines 


280     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  force  go  on  vibrating,  rotating,  moving  in  waves,  up 
and  down,  forward  and  back,  indifferent  to  control  and 
pure  waste  of  energy,  —  forms  of  repulsion,  —  until  their 
motion  becomes  guided  by  motive,  as  an  electric  current 
is  induced  by  a  dynamo. 

History,  so  far  as  it  recounts  progress,  deals  only  with 
such  induction  or  direction,  and  therefore  in  history  only 
the  attractive  or  inductive  mass,  as  Thought,  helps  to 
construct.  Only  attractive  forces  have  a  positive,  perma- 
nent value  for  the  advance  of  society  on  the  path  it  has 
actually  pursued.  The  processes  of  History  being  irre- 
versible, the  action  of  Pressure  can  be  exerted  only  in  one 
direction,  and  therefore  the  variable  called  Pressure  in 
physics  has  its  equivalent  in  the  Attraction,  which,  in  the 
historical  rule  of  phase,  gives  to  human  society  its  forward 
movement.  Thus  in  the  historical  formula.  Attraction  is 
equivalent  to  Pressure,  and  takes  its  place. 

In  physics,  the  second  important  variable  is  Tempera- 
ture. Always  a  certain  temperature  must  coincide  with 
a  certain  pressm-e  before  the  critical  point  of  change  in 
phase  can  be  reached.  In  history,  and  possibly  wherever 
the  movement  is  one  of  translation  in  a  medium,  the 
Temperature  is  a  result  of  acceleration,  or  its  equivalent, 
and  in  the  Rule  of  historical  phase  Acceleration  takes  its 
place. 


THE  RULE   OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      281 

The  third  important  variable  in  the  physico-chemical 
phase  is  Volume,  and  it  reappears  in  the  historical  phase 
unchanged.  Under  the  Rule  of  Phase,  therefore,  man's 
Thought,  considered  as  a  single  substance  passing  through 
a  series  of  historical  phases,  is  assumed  to  follow  the 
analogy  of  water,  and  to  pass  from  one  phase  to  another 
through  a  series  of  critical  points  which  are  determined 
by  the  three  factors  Attraction,  Acceleration,  and  Volume, 
for  each  change  of  equiUbrium.  Among  the  score  of 
figures  that  might  be  used  to  illustrate  the  idea,  that  of  a 
current  is  perhaps  the  nearest ;  but  whether  the  current 
be  conceived  as  a  fluid,  a  gas,  or  as  electricity,  —  whether 
it  is  drawn  on  by  gravitation  or  induction,  —  whether  it 
be  governed  by  the  laws  of  astronomical  or  electric  mass, 
—  it  must  always  be  conceived  as  a  solvent,  acting  hke 
heat  or  electricity,  and  increasing  in  volume  by  the  law 
of  squares. 

This  solvent,  then,  —  this  ultimate  motion  which 
absorbs  all  other  forms  of  motion  is  an  ultimate  equilib- 
rium, —  this  ethereal  current  of  Thought,  —  is  conceived 
as  existing,  Uke  ice  on  a  mountain  range,  and  trickling 
from  every  pore  of  rock,  in  innumerable  rills,  uniting 
always  into  larger  channels,  and  always  dissolving  what- 
ever it  meets,  until  at  last  it  reaches  equiUbrium  in  the 
ocean  of  ultimate  solution.    Historically  the  current  can 


282     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

be  watched  for  only  a  brief  time,  at  most  ten  thousand 
years.  Inferentially  it  can  be  divined  for  perhaps  a 
hundred  thousand.  Geologically  it  can  be  followed  back 
perhaps  a  himdred  million  years,  but  however  long  the 
time,  the  origin  of  consciousness  is  lost  in  the  rocks  before 
we  can  reach  more  than  a  fraction  of  its  career. 

In  this  long  and  —  for  our  purposes  —  infinite  stretch 
of  time,  the  substance  called  Thought  has,  —  like  the 
substance  called  water  or  gas,  —  passed  through  a  variety 
of  phases,  or  changes,  or  states  of  equilibrium,  with  which 
we  are  all,  more  or  less,  familiar.  We  live  in  a  world  of 
phases,  so  much  more  astonishing  than  the  explosion  of 
rockets,  that  we  cannot,  imless  we  are  Gibbs  or  Watts, 
stop  every  moment  to  ask  what  becomes  of  the  salt  we 
put  in  our  soup,  or  the  water  we  boil  in  our  teapot,  and 
we  are  apt  to  remain  stupidly  stolid  when  a  bulb  bursts 
into  a  tuUp,  or  a  worm  turns  into  a  butterfly.  No  phase 
compares  in  wonder  with  the  mere  fact  of  our  own  existence, 
and  this  wonder  has  so  completely  exhausted  the  powers 
of  Thought  that  mankind,  except  in  a  few  laboratories, 
has  ceased  to  wonder,  or  even  to  think.  The  Egyptians 
had  infinite  reason  to  bow  down  before  a  beetle ;  we  have 
as  much  reason  as  they,  for  we  know  no  more  about  it ; 
but  we  have  learned  to  accept  our  beetle  Phase,  and  to 
recognize  that  everything,  animate  or  inanimate,  spiritual 


THE  RULE  OP  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY     283 

or  material,  exists  in  Phase ;  that  all  is  equilibrium  more 
or  less  unstable,  and  that  our  whole  vision  is  Umited  to 
the  bare  possibility  of  calculating  in  mathematical  form 
the  degree  of  a  given  instability. 

Thus  results  the  plain  assurance  that  the  future  of 
Thought,  and  therefore  of  History,  lies  in  the  hands  of 
the  physicists,  and  that  the  futm-e  historian  must  seek 
his  education  in  the  world  of  mathematical  physics. 
Nothing  can  be  expected  from  further  study  on  the  old 
lines.  A  new  generation  must  be  brought  up  to  think  by 
new  methods,  and  if  om"  historical  department  in  the 
Universities  cannot  enter  this  next  Phase,  the  physical 
department  will  have  to  assume  the  task  alone. 

Meanwhile,  though  quite  without  the  necessary  educa- 
tion, the  historical  inquirer  or  experimenter  may  be 
permitted  to  guess  for  a  moment,  —  merely  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  guessing,  —  what  may  perhaps  turn  out  to  be  a 
possible  term  of  the  problem  as  the  physicist  will  take 
it  up.  He  may  assume,  as  his  starting-point,  that 
Thought  is  a  historical  substance,  analogous  to  an  electric 
current,  which  has  obeyed  the  laws,  —  whatever  they 
are,  —  of  Phase.  The  hypothesis  is  not  extravagant. 
As  a  fact,  we  know  only  too  well  that  our  historical 
Thought  has  obeyed,  and  still  obeys,  some  law  of  Inertia, 
since  it  has  habitually  and  obstinately  resisted  deflection 


284    THE  DECHIADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

by  new  forces  or  motives ;  we  know  even  that  it  acts  as 
though  it  felt  friction  from  resistance,  since  it  is  constantly 
stopped  by  all  sorts  of  obstacles;  we  can  apply  to  it, 
letter  for  letter,  one  of  the  capital  laws  of  physical  chem- 
istry, that,  where  an  equilibrium  is  subjected  to  conditions 
which  tend  to  change,  it  reacts  internally  in  ways  that 
tend  to  resist  the  external  constraint,  and  to  preserve  its 
established  balance;  often  it  is  visibly  set  in  motion  by 
sjnnpathetic  forces  which  act  upon  it  as  a  magnet  acts 
on  soft  iron,  by  induction;  the  conmionest  school- 
history  takes  for  granted  that  it  has  shown  periods  of 
unquestioned  acceleration.  If,  then,  society  has  in  so 
many  ways  obeyed  the  ordinary  laws  of  attraction  and 
inertia,  nothing  can  be  more  natural  than  to  inquire 
whether  it  obeys  them  in  all  respects,  and  whether  the 
rules  that  have  been  applied  to  fluids  and  gases  in  general, 
apply  also  to  society  as  a  current  of  Thought.  Such  a 
speculative  inquiry  is  the  source  of  almost  all  that  is 
known  of  magnetism,  electricity  and  ether,  and  all  other 
possible  immaterial  substances,  but  in  history  the  inquiry 
has  the  vast  advantage  that  a  Law  of  Phase  has  been  long 
estabhshed  for  the  stages  of  human  thought. 

No  student  of  history  is  so  ignorant  as  not  to  know 
that  fully  fifty  years  before  the  chemists  took  up  the 
study  of  Phases,  Auguste  Comte  laid  down  in  sufficiently 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      285 

precise  terms  a  law  of  phase  for  history  which  received  the 
warm  adhesion  of  two  authorities,  —  the  most  eminent 
of  that  day,  —  Emile  Littr^  and  John  Stuart  Mill. 
Nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  Willard  Gibbs 
announced  his  mathematical  formulas  of  phase  to  the 
physicists  and  chemists,  Turgot  stated  the  Rule  of  his- 
torical Phase  as  clearly  as  Franklin  stated  the  law  of 
electricity.  As  far  as  concerns  theory,  we  are  not  much, 
further  advanced  now  than  in  1750,  and  know  httle  better 
what  electricity  or  thought  is,  as  substance,  than  Franklin 
and  Turgot  knew  it;  but  this  failure  to  penetrate  the 
ultimate  synthesis  of  nature  is  no  excuse  for  professors 
of  history  to  abandon  the  field  which  is  theirs  by  prior 
right,  and  still  less  can  they  plead  their  ignorance  of  the 
training  in  mathematics  and  physics  which  it  was  their 
duty  to  seek.  The  theory  of  history  is  a  much  easier 
study  than  the  theory  of  light. 

It  was  about  1830  that  Comte  began  to  teach  the  law 
that  the  human  mind,  as  studied  in  the  current  of  human 
thought,  had  passed  through  three  stages  or  phases :  — 
theological,  metaphysical,  and  what  he  called  positive  as 
developed  in  his  own  teaching;  and  that  this  was  the 
first  principle  of  social  dynamics.  His  critics  tacitly 
accepted  in  principle  the  possibility  of  some  such  division, 
but  they  fell  to  disputing  Comte's  succession  of  phases 


286     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

as  though  this  were  essential  to  the  law.  Comte's  idea 
of  applying  the  rule  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  validity 
of  the  rule  itself.  Once  it  was  admitted  that  human 
thought  had  passed  through  three  known  phases,  — 
analogous  to  the  chemical  phases  of  sohd,  liquid,  and 
gaseous,  —  the  standard  of  measurement  which  was  to 
be  applied  might  vary  with  every  experimenter  until  the 
most  convenient  should  be  agreed  upon.  The  commonest 
objection  to  Comte's  rule,  —  the  objection  that  the  three 
phases  had  always  existed  and  still  exist,  together,  — • 
had  still  less  to  do  with  the  vahdity  of  the  law.  The 
residuum  of  every  distillate  contains  all  the  original 
elements  in  equilibrium  with  the  whole  series,  if  the 
process  is  not  carried  too  far.  The  three  phases  always 
exist  together  in  equilibrium;  but  their  hmits  on  either 
side  are  fixed  by  changes  of  temperature  and  pressiu-e, 
manifesting  themselves  in  changes  of  Direction  or  Form. 
Discarding,  then,  as  unessential,  the  divisions  of  his- 
tory suggested  by  Comte,  the  physicist-historian  would 
assume  that  a  change  of  phase  was  to  be  recognized  by 
a  change  of  Form;  that  is,  by  a  change  of  Direction; 
and  that  it  was  caused  by  Acceleration,  and  increase  of 
Volume  or  Concentration.  In  this  sense  the  experimenter 
is  restricted  rigidly  to  the  search  for  changes  of  Direction 
or  Form  of  thought,  but  has  no  concern  in  its  acceleration 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      287 

except  as  one  of  the  three  variables  to  which  he  has  to 
assign  mathematical  values  in  order  to  fix  the  critical 
point  of  change.  The  first  step  in  experiment  is  to  decide 
upon  some  particular  and  imquestioned  change  of  Direc- 
tion or  Form  in  human  thought. 

By  conmion  consent,  one  period  of  history  has  always 
been  regarded,  even  by  itself,  as  a  Renaissance,  and  has 
boasted  of  its  singular  triumph  in  breaking  the  continuity 
of  Thought.  The  exact  date  of  this  revolution  varies 
within  a  margin  of  two  hundred  years  or  more,  according 
as  the  student  fancies  the  chief  factor  to  have  been  the 
introduction  of  printing,  the  discovery  of  America,  the 
invention  of  the  telescope,  the  writings  of  Gahleo,  Des- 
cartes, and  Bacon,  or  the  mechanical  laws  perfected  by 
Newton,  Huyghens,  and  the  mathematicians  as  late  as 
1700 ;  but  no  one  has  ever  doubted  the  fact  of  a  distinct 
change  in  direction  and  form  of  thought  during  that 
period;  which  furnishes  the  necessary  starting-point  for 
any  experimental  study  of  historical  Phase. 

Any  one  who  reads  half  a  dozen  pages  of  Descartes  or 
Bacon  sees  that  these  great  reformers  expressly  aimed  at 
changing  the  Form  of  thought;  that  they  had  no  idea 
but  to  give  it  new  direction,  as  Columbus  and  Galileo 
had  expressly  intended  to  affect  direction  in  space ;  and 
even  had  they  all  been  unconscious  of  intent,  the  Church 


288  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

would  have  pointed  it  out  to  them,  as  it  did  with  so 
much  emphasis  to  GaUleo  in  1633.  On  this  point  there 
was  no  difference  of  opinion ;  the  change  of  direction  in 
Thought  was  not  a  mere  acceleration;  it  was  an  angle 
or  tangent  so  considerable  that  the  Church  in  vain  tried 
to  ignore  it.  Gahleo  proved  it,  and  the  Church  agreed 
with  him  on  that  point  if  on  no  other.  Nothing  could  be 
more  unanimously  admitted  than  the  change  of  direction 
between  the  thought  of  St.  Augustine  and  that  of  Lord 
Bacon. 

Since  the  Rule  of  historical  Phase  has  got  to  rest  on  this 
admission,  theory  cannot  venture  on  the  next  step  unless 
this  one  is  abundantly  proved;  but,  in  fact,  no  one  as 
yet  has  ever  doubted  it.  The  moment  was  altogether 
the  most  vital  that  history  ever  recorded,  and  left  the 
deepest  impression  on  men's  memory,  but  this  popular 
impression  hardly  expresses  its  scientific  value.  As  a 
change  of  phase  it  offered  singular  interest,  because,  in 
this  case  alone,  the  process  could  be  followed  as  though 
it  were  electrolytic,  and  the  path  of  each  separate  molecule 
were  visible  imder  the  microscope.  Any  school-boy  could 
plot  on  a  sheet  of  paper  in  abscissae  and  ordinates  the 
points  through  which  the  curve  of  thought  passed,  as 
fixed  by  the  values  of  the  men  and  their  inventions  or 
discoveries.     History  offers  no  other  demonstration  to 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      289 

compare  with  it,  and  the  more  because  the  curve  shows 
plainly  that  the  new  Unes  of  Force  or  Thought  were 
induced  Hues,  obeying  the  laws  of  mass,  and  not  those  of 
self-induction.  On  this  obedience  Lord  Bacon  dwelt  with 
tireless  persistence;  "the  true  and  legitimate  object  of 
science  is  only  to  endow  human  life  with  new  inventions 
and  forces" ;  but  he  defined  the  attractive  power  of  this 
magnet  as  equal  to  the  sum  of  nature's  forces,  so  far  as  they 
could  serve  man's  needs  or  wishes ;  and  he  followed  that 
attraction  precisely  as  Columbus  followed  the  attraction 
of  a  new  world,  or  as  Newton  suffered  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation on  his  mind  as  he  did  on  his  body.  As  each  newly 
appropriated  force  increased  the  attraction  between  the 
sum  of  nature's  forces  and  the  volume  of  human  mind, 
by  the  usual  law  of  squares,  the  acceleration  hurried 
society  towards  the  critical  point  that  marked  the  passage 
into  a  new  phase  as  though  it  were  heat  impeUing  water 
to  explode  as  steam. 

Only  the  electrolytic  process  permits  us  to  watch  such 
movements  in  physics  and  chemistry,  and  the  change  of 
phase  in  1500-1700  is  marvellously  electrolytic,  but  the 
more  curious  because  we  can  even  give  names  to  the 
atoms  or  molecules  that  passed  over  to  the  positive  or 
negative  electrode,  and  can  watch  the  accumulation  of 
force  which  ended  at  last  by  deflecting  the  whole  current 


290  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

of  Thought.  The  maximum  movement  possible  in  the 
old  channel  was  exceeded;  the  acceleration  and  con- 
centration, or  volume,  reached  the  point  of  sudden  expan- 
sion, and  the  new  phase  began. 

The  history  of  the  new  phase  has  no  direct  relation 
with  that  which  preceded  it.  The  gap  between  theology 
and  mathematics  was  so  sharp  in  its  rapid  separation  that 
history  is  much  perplexed  to  maintain  the  connection. 
The  earlier  signs  of  the  coming  change,  —  before  1500  — 
were  mostly  small  additions  to  the  commoner  mechanical 
resources  of  society ;  but  when,  after  1500,  these  additions 
assumed  larger  scope  and  higher  aim,  they  still  retained 
mechanical  figure  and  form  even  in  expanding  the  law 
of  gravitation  into  astronomical  space.  If  a  direct 
connection  between  the  two  phases  is  more  evident  on 
one  Une  than  on  another,  it  is  in  the  curious  point  of  view 
that  society  seemed  to  take  of  Newton's  extension  of  the 
law  of  gravitation  to  include  astronomical  mass,  which, 
for  two  hundred  years,  resembled  an  attribute  of  divinity, 
and  grew  into  a  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe  amount- 
ing to  a  reHgion.  The  connection  of  thought  lay  in  the 
human  reflection  of  itself  in  the  universe ;  yet  the  accelera- 
tion of  the  seventeenth  century,  as  compared  with  that 
of  any  previous  age,  was  rapid,  and  that  of  the  eighteenth 
was  startling.    The  acceleration  became  even  measurable, 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      291 

for  it  took  the  form  of  utilizing  heat  as  force,  through  the 
steam-engine,  and  this  addition  of  power  was  measurable 
in  the  coal  output.  Society  followed  the  same  lines  of 
attraction  with  little  change,  down  to  1840,  when  the 
new  chemical  energy  of  electricity  began  to  deflect  the 
thought  of  society  again,  and  Faraday  rivalled  Newton 
in  the  vigor  with  which  he  marked  out  the  path  of  changed 
attractions,  but  the  purely  mechanical  theory  of  the 
universe  typified  by  Newton  and  Dalton  held  its  own, 
and  reached  its  highest  authority  towards  1870,  or  about 
the  time  when  the  dynamo  came  into  use. 

Throughout  these  three  hundred  years,  and  especially 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  acceleration  suggests  at 
once  the  old,  familiar  law  of  squares.  The  curve  re- 
sembles that  of  the  vaporization  of  water.  The  resem- 
blance is  too  close  to  be  disregarded,  for  nature  loves  the 
logarithm,  and  perpetually  recurs  to  her  inverse  square. 
For  convenience,  if  only  as  a  momentary  refuge,  the 
physicist-historian  will  probably  have  to  try  the  experi- 
ment of  taking  the  law  of  inverse  squares  as  his  standard 
of  social  acceleration  for  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
consequently  for  the  whole  phase,  which  obliges  him  to 
accept  it  experimentally  as  a  general  law  of  history. 
Nature  is  rarely  so  simple  as  to  act  rigorously  on  the 
square,  but  History,  like  Mathematics,  is  obliged  to  assume 


292     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

that  eccentricities  more  or  less  balance  each  other,  so 
that  something  remains  constant  at  last,  and  it  is  com- 
pelled to  approach  its  problems  by  means  of  some  fiction, 


'1800 


1600 


1700 


—  some  infinitesimal  calculus,  —  which  may  be  left  as 
general  and  undetermined  as  the  formulas  of  our  greatest 
master,  Willard  Gibbs,  but  which  gives  a  hypothetical 
movement  for  an  ideal  substance  that  can  be  used  for 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      293 

relation.  Some  experimental  starting-point  must  always 
be  assumed,  and  the  mathematical  historian  will  be  at 
liberty  to  assume  the  most  convenient,  which  is  Ukely 
to  be  the  rule  of  geometrical  progression. 

Thus  the  j&rst  step  towards  a  Rule  of  Phase  for  history- 
may  be  conceived  as  possible.  In  fact  the  Phase  may 
be  taken  as  admitted  by  all  society  and  every  authority 
since  the  condemnation  of  Galileo  in  1633 ;  it  is  only  the 
law,  or  rule,  that  the  mathematician  and  physicist  would 
aim  at  establishing.  Supposing,  then,  that  he  were  to 
begin  by  the  Phase  of  1600-1900,  which  he  might  call  the 
Mechanical  Phase,  and  supposing  that  he  assumes  for 
the  whole  of  it  the  observed  acceleration  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  law  of  squares,  his  next  step  would  lead  him 
backward  to  the  far  more  difficult  problem  of  fixing  the 
limits  of  the  Phase  that  preceded  1600. 

Here  was  the  point  which  Auguste  Comte  and  all  other 
authorities  have  failed  to  agree  upon.  Although  no  one 
denies  that  at  some  moment  between  1500  and  1700 
society  passed  from  one  form  of  thought  to  another, 
every  one  may  reasonably  hesitate  to  fix  upon  the  upper 
limit  to  be  put  on  the  earlier.  Comte  felt  the  difficulty 
so  strongly  that  he  subdivided  his  scale  into  a  fetish, 
polytheistic,  monotheistic,  and  metaphysical  series,  before 
arriving    at    himself,    or    Positivism.    Most    historians 


294  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

would  admit  the  change  from  polytheism  to  monotheism, 
about  the  year  500,  between  the  establishment  of  Chris- 
tianity and  that  of  Mohammedanism  as  a  distinct  change 
in  the  form  or  direction  of  thought,  and  perhaps  in  truth 
society  never  performed  a  more  remarkable  feat  than  when 
it  consciously  unified  its  religious  machinery  as  it  had 
already  concentrated  its  political  and  social  organism. 
The  concentration  certainly  marked  an  era;  whether  it 
marked  a  change  of  Direction  may  be  disputed.  The 
physicist  may  prefer  to  regard  it  as  a  refusal  to  change 
direction ;  an  obedience  to  the  physico-chemical  law  that 
when  an  equilibrium  is  subjected  to  conditions  which 
tend  towards  change,  it  reacts  internally  in  ways  that 
tend  to  resist  the  external  constraint ;  and,  in  fact,  the 
estabhshment  of  monotheism  was  regarded  by  the  philoso- 
phers even  in  its  own  day  rather  as  a  reaction  than  an 
advance.  No  doubt  the  Mohammedan  or  the  Christian 
felt  the  change  of  deity  as  the  essence  of  religion;  but 
the  mathematician  might  well  think  that  the  scope  and 
nature  of  religion  had  little  to  do-  with  the  number  of 
Gods.  Religion  is  the  recognition  of  unseen  power  which 
has  control  of  man's  destiny,  and  the  power  which  man 
may,  at  different  times  or  in  different  regions,  recognize 
as  controlling  his  destiny,  in  no  way  alters  his  attitude 
or  the  form  of  the  thought.    The  physicist,  who  affects 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      295 

psychology,  will  regard  religion  as  the  self-projection  of 
mind  into  nature  in  one  direction,  as  science  is  the  pro- 
jection of  mind  into  nature  in  another.  Both  are  illusions, 
as  the  metaphysician  conceives,  and  in  neither  case  does 
—  or  can  —  the  mind  reach  anything  but  a  different 
reflection  of  its  own  features ;  but  in  changing  from  poly- 
theism to  monotheism  the  mind  merely  concentrated 
the  image;  it  was  an  acceleration,  not  a  direction  that 
was  changed.  From  first  to  last  the  fetish  idea  inhered 
in  the  thought;  the  idea  of  an  occult  power  to  which 
obedience  was  due,  —  a  reflection  of  the  human  self  from 
the  unknown  depths  of  nature  —  was  as  innate  in  the  Allah 
of  Mohammed  as  in  the  fetish  serpent  which  Moses  made 
of  brass. 

The  reflection  or  projection  of  the  mind  in  nature  was 
the  earliest  and  will  no  doubt  be  the  last  motive  of  man's 
mind,  whether  as  religion  or  as  science,  and  only  the 
attraction  will  vary  according  to  the  value  which  the 
mind  assigns  to  the  image  of  the  thing  that  moves  it; 
but  the  mere  concentration  of  the  image  need  not  change 
the  direction  of  movement,  any  more  than  the  concen- 
tration of  converging  paths  into  one  single  road  need 
change  the  direction  of  travel  or  traffic.  The  direction 
of  the  social  movement  may  be  taken,  for  scientific  pur- 
poses, as  unchanged  from  the  beginning  of  history  to  the 


296     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

condemnation  of  Galileo  which  marked  the  conscious 
recognition  of  break  in  continuity ;  but  in  that  case  the 
physicist-historian  will  probably  find  nowhere  the  means 
of  drawing  any  clean  line  of  division  across  the  current  of 
thought,  even  if  he  follows  it  back  to  the  lowest  known 
archaic  race.  Notoriously,  during  this  enormously  long 
Religious  Phase,  the  critical  point  seemed  to  be  touched 
again  and  again,  —  by  Greeks  and  Romans,  in  Athens, 
Alexandria,  and  Constantinople,  long  before  it  was  finally 
passed  in  1600 ;  but  so  also,  in  following  the  stream  back- 
wards to  its  source,  the  historian  will  probably  find  sugges- 
tions of  a  critical  point  in  ethnology  long  before  such  a 
critical  point  can  be  fixed.  So  far  as  he  will  see,  man's 
thought  began  by  projecting  its  own  image,  in  this  form, 
into  the  unknown  of  nature.  Yet  nothing  in  science 
is  quite  so  firmly  accepted  as  the  fact  that  such  a  change 
of  phase  took  place.  Whether  evolution  was  natural  or 
supernatural,  the  leap  of  nature  from  the  phase  of  instinct 
to  the  phase  of  thought  was  so  immense  as  to  impress 
itself  on  every  imagination.  No  one  denies  that  it  must 
have  been  relatively  ancient ;  —  few  anthropologists 
would  be  content  with  less  than  a  hundred  thousand  years ; 
—  and  no  one  need  be  troubled  by  admitting  that  it  may 
have  been  relatively  sudden,  like  many  other  mutations, 
since  all  the  intermediate  steps  have  vanished,  and  the 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      297 

line  of  connection  is  obliterated.  Yet  the  anthropoid  ape 
remains  to  guide  the  physical  historian,  and,  what  is  more 
convincing  than  the  ape,  the  whole  phase  of  instinct  sur- 
vives, not  merely  as  a  force  in  actual  evidence,  but  as  the 
foundation  of  the  whole  geological  record.  As  an  im- 
material force,  Instinct  was  so  strong  as  to  overcome  ob- 
stacles that  Intellect  has  been  helpless  to  affect.  The 
bird,  the  beetle,  the  butterfly  accomplished  feats  that 
still  defy  all  the  resources  of  human  reason.  The  attrac- 
tions that  led  instinct  to  pursue  so  many  and  such  varied 
lines  to  such  great  distances,  must  have  been  intensely 
strong  and  indefinitely  lasting.  The  quality  that  devel- 
oped the  eye  and  the  wing  of  the  bee  and  the  condor  has 
no  known  equivalent  in  man.  The  vast  perspective  of 
time  opened  by  the  most  superficial  study  of  this  phase 
has  always  staggered  belief ;  but  geology  itself  breaks  off 
abruptly  in  the  middle  of  the  story,  when  already  the 
fishes  and  crustaceans  astonish  by  their  modem  airs. 

Yet  the  anthropoid  ape  is  assumed  to  have  potentially 
contained  the  future,  as  he  actually  epitomized  the  past ; 
and  to  him,  as  to  us,  the  phase  to  which  he  belonged  was 
the  last  and  briefest.  Behind  him  and  his  so-called 
instinct  or  consciousness,  stretched  other  phases  of  vege- 
table and  mechanical  motion,  —  more  or  less  organic,  — 
phases  of  semi-physical,  semi-material,  attractions  and 


298     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

repulsions,  —  that  could  have,  in  the  concept,  no  possible 
limitation  of  time.  Neither  bee,  nor  monkey,  nor  man, 
could  conceive  a  time  when  stones  could  not  fall.  The 
anthropoid  ape  could  look  back,  as  certainly  as  the  most 
scientiJSc  modern  historian,  to  a  critical  point  at  which 
his  own  phase  must  have  begun,  when  the  rudimentary 
forces  that  had  developed  in  the  vegetables  had  acquired  a 
volume  and  complexity  which  could  no  longer  be  enclosed 
in  rigid  forms,  and  had  expanded  into  freer  movement. 
The  ape  might  have  predicted  his  own  expansion  into 
new  force,  for,  long  before  the  first  man  was  sketched,  the 
monkeys  and  their  companions  in  instinct  had  peopled 
every  continent,  and  civiUzed  —  according  to  their 
standards  —  the  whole  world. 

The  problem  to  the  anthropoid  ape  a  hundred  thousand 
years  ago  was  the  same  as  that  addressed  to  the  physicist- 
historian  of  1900 :  —  How  long  could  he  go  on  developing 
indefinite  new  phases  in  response  to  the  occult  attractions 
of  an  infinitely  extended  universe?  What  new  direction 
could  his  genius  take  ?  To  him,  the  past  was  a  miraculous 
development,  and,  to  perfect  himself,  he  needed  only  to 
swim  Hke  a  fish  and  soar  like  a  bird;  but  probably  he 
felt  no  conscious  need  of  mind.  His  phase  had  lasted 
unbroken  for  millions  of  years,  and  had  produced  an 
absolutely    miraculous    triumph    of    instinct.    Had    he 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      299 

been  so  far  gifted  as  to  foresee  his  next  mutation,  he  would 
have  possibly  found  in  it  only  a  few  meagre  pages,  telling 
of  impoverished  life,  at  the  end  of  his  own  enormous  library 
of  records,  the  bulk  of  which  had  been  lost.  Had  he 
studied  these  past  records,  he  would  probably  have 
admitted  that  thus  far,  by  some  mechanism  totally  in- 
comprehensible, the  series  of  animated  beings  had  in  some 
directions  responded  to  nature's  call,  and  had  thrown  out 
tentacles  on  many  sides ;  but  he,  as  a  creature  of  instinct, 
would  have  instinctively  wished  to  develop  in  the  old 
directions,  —  he  could  have  felt  no  conscious  wish  to 
become  a  mathematician. 

Thus  the  physicist-historian  seems  Ukely  to  be  forced 
into  admitting  that  an  attractive  force,  hke  gravitation, 
drew  these  trickhng  rivulets  of  energy  into  new  phases 
by  an  external  influence  which  tended  to  concentrate 
and  accelerate  their  motion  by  a  law  with  which  their 
supposed  wishes  or  appetites  had  no  conscious  relation. 
At  a  certain  point  the  electric  corpuscle  was  obliged  to 
become  a  gas,  the  gas  a  Uquid,  the  liquid  a  soHd.  For 
material  mass,  only  one  law  was  known  to  hold  good. 
Ice,  water,  and  gas,  all  have  weight ;  they  obey  the  law  of 
astronomical  mass ;  they  are  guided  by  the  attraction  of 
matter.  If  the  current  of  Thought  has  shown  obedience 
to  the  law  of  gravitation  it  is  material,  and  its  phases 
should  be  easily  calculated. 


300     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

The  physicist  will,  therefore,  have  to  begin  by  trying 
the  figure  of  the  old  Newtonian  or  Cartesian  vortices,  or 
gravitating  group  of  heterogeneous  substances  moving  in 
space  as  though  in  a  closed  receptacle.  Any  nebula  or 
vortex-group  would  answer  his  purpose,  —  say  the  great 
nebula  of  Orion,  which  he  would  conceive  as  containing 
potentially  every  possible  phase  of  substance.  Here  the 
various  local  centres  of  attraction  would  tend  to  arrange 
the  diffused  elements  like  iron-filings  round  a  magnet  in 
a  phase  of  motion  which,  if  the  entire  equilibrimn  were 
perfect,  would  last  forever;  but  if,  at  any  point,  the 
equiUbrium  were  disturbed,  the  whole  volume  would 
be  set  in  new  motion,  until,  under  the  rise  in  pressure  and 
temperature,  one  phase  after  another  must  mechanically, 
—  and  more  and  more  suddenly,  —  occur  with  the  in- 
creasing velocity  of  movement. 

That  such  sudden  changes  of  phase  do  in  fact  occur 
is  one  of  the  articles  of  astronomical  faith,  but  the  reahty 
of  the  fact  has  little  to  do  with  the  convenience  of  the 
figure.  The  nebula  is  beyond  human  measurements. 
A  simple  figure  is  needed,  and  our  solar  system  offers 
none.  The  nearest  analogy  would  be  that  of  a  comet, 
not  so  much  because  it  betrays  marked  phases,  as  because 
it  resembles  Thought  in  certain  respects,  since,  in  the 
first  place,  no  one  knows  what  it  is,  which  is  also  true  of 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      301 

Thought,  and  it  seems  in  some  cases  to  be  immaterial, 
passing  in  a  few  hours  from  the  cold  of  space  to  actual 
contact  with  the  sun  at  a  temperature  some  two  thousand 
times  that  of  incandescent  iron,  and  so  back  to  the  cold 
of  space,  without  apparent  harm,  while  its  tail  sweeps 
round  an  inconceivable  circle  with  almost  the  speed  of 
thought,  —  certainly  the  speed  of  light,  —  and  its  body 
may  show  no  nucleus  at  all.  If  not  a  Thought,  the  comet 
is  a  sort  of  brother  of  Thought,  an  early  condensation  of 
the  ether  itself,  as  the  human  mind  may  be  another, 
traversing  the  infinite  without  origin  or  end,  and  attracted 
by  a  sudden  object  of  curiosity  that  lies  by  chance  near 
its  path.  If  such  elements  are  subject  to  the  so-called 
law  of  gravitation,  no  good  reason  can  exist  for  denying 
gravitation  to  the  mind. 

Such  a  typical  comet  is  that  of  1668,  or  1843,  or  New- 
ton's comet  of  1680 ;  bodies  which  fall  in  a  direct  line,  — 
itself  a  miracle,  —  from  space,  for  some  hundreds  of 
years,  with  an  acceleration  given  by  the  simple  formula 

k  — ,  where  k  is  the  constant  of  gravitation,  M  the  mass 

of  the  sun  and  r  the  distance  between  the  comet  and  the 
centre  of  the  sun.  If  not  deflected  from  its  straight 
course  by  any  of  the  planets,  it  penetrates  at  last  within 
the  orbit  of  Venus,  and  approaches  the  sun. 


302     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 


At  five  o'clock  one  winter  morning  in  1843,  the  comet 
began  to  show  deflection  at  about  two-and-a-half  diameters 
distance  from  the  sun;  at  ten  o'clock  it  was  abreast  of 
the  sun,  and  swung  about  at  a  right  angle ;   at  half  past 

ten  it  passed  perihelion  at  a 
speed  of  about  350  miles  a 
second;  and  at  noon,  after 
having  passed  three  hours  in 
a  temperature  exceeding  5000° 
Centigrade,  it  appeared  un- 
harmed on  its  return  course, 
until  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  it  was  flying  back  to 
the  space  it  came  from,  on  the 
same  straight  line,  parallel  to 
that  by  which  it  came. 

Nothing  in  the  behavior  of 
7  a. m.// 1600-1700    Thought  is  more  paradoxical 
1700-1800      than  that  of  these  planets,  or 
1800-1900  shows    direction    or    purpose 

Passage  of  the  Comet  op  1843    more  flagrantly,  and  it  hap- 

February  27.  twelve  hours  ^^^^    ^YiSit     they     fumish     the 

only  astronomical  parallel  for  the  calculated  accelera- 
tion of  the  last  Phase  of  Thought.  No  other  heavenly 
body  shows  the  same  sharp  curve  or  excessive  speed. 


4  p.m. + 
3  p.m.  T 
2  p.m.  \ 
1  p.m.  \ 
12  m.  ^ 


5h. 


9h.-l  a.m. 


VO/ 


THE  RULE   OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      303 

Yet,  if  the  calculated  curve  of  deflection  of  Thought  in 
1600-1900  were  put  on  that  of  the  planet,  it  would  show 
that  man's  evolution  had  passed  perihelion,  and  that  his 
movement  was  already  retrograde.  To  some  minds, 
this  objection  might  not  seem  fatal,  and  in  fact  another 
fifty  years  must  elapse  before  the  rate  of  human  move- 
ment would  sensibly  relax ;  but  another  objection  would 
be  serious,  if  not  for  the  theory,  at  least  for  the  figure. 
The  acceleration  of  the  comet  is  much  slower  than  that 
of  society.  The  world  did  not  double  or  treble  its  move- 
ment between  1800  and  1900,  but,  measured  by  any 
standard  known  to  science  —  by  horse-power,  calories, 
volts,  mass  in  any  shape,  —  the  tension  and  vibration 
and  volume  and  so-called  progression  of  society  were 
fully  a  thousand  times  greater  in  1900  than  in  1800 ;  — 
the  force  had  doubled  ten  times  over,  and  the  speed,  when 
measured  by  electrical  standards  as  in  telegraphy,  ap- 
proached infinity,  and  had  annihilated  both  space  and 
time.     No  law  of  material  movement  applied  to  it. 

Some  such  result  was  to  be  expected.  Nature  is  not 
so  simple  as  to  obey  only  one  law,  or  to  apply  necessarily 
a  law  of  material  mass  to  immaterial  substance.  The 
result  proves  only  that  the  comet  is  material,  and  that 
thought  is  less  material  than  the  comet.  The  figure 
serves  the  physicist  only  to  introduce  the  problem.    If 


304     THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

the  laws  of  material  mass  do  not  help  him,  he  will  seek 
for  a  law  of  immaterial  mass,  and  here  he  has,  as  yet, 
but  one  analogy  to  follow,  —  that  of  electricity.  If  the 
comet,  or  the  current  of  water,  offers  some  suggestion 
for  the  current  of  human  society,  electricity  offers  one 
so  much  stronger  that  psychologists  are  apt  instinctively 
to  study  the  mind  as  a  phase  of  electro-magnetism. 
Whether  such  a  view  is  sound,  or  not,  matters  nothing 
to  its  convenience  as  a  figure.  Thought  has  always 
moved  under  the  incumbrance  of  matter,  like  an  electron 
in  a  solution,  and,  unless  the  conditions  are  extremely 
favorable,  it  does  not  move  at  all,  as  has  happened  in 
many  solutions,  —  as  in  China,  —  or  in  some  cases  may 
become  enfeebled  and  die  out,  without  succession.  Only 
by  watching  its  motion  on  the  enormous  scale  of  his- 
torical and  geological  or  biological  time  can  one  see,  — 
across  great  gulfs  of  ignorance,  —  that  the  current  has 
been  constant  as  measured  by  its  force  and  volume  in 
the  absorption  of  nature's  resources,  and  that,  within 
the  last  century,  its  acceleration  has  been  far  more  rapid 
than  before,  —  more  rapid  than  can  be  accounted  for 
by  the  laws  of  material  mass;  but  only  highly  trained 
physicists  could  invent  a  model  to  represent  such  motion. 
The  ignorant  student  can  merely  guess  what  the  skilled 
experimenter  would  do ;  he  can  only  imagine  an  ideal  case. 


THE  RULE   OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      305 

This  ideal  case  would  offer  to  his  imagination  the  figure 
of  nature's  power  as  an  infinitely  powerful  dynamo,  at- 
tracting or  inducing  a  current  of  human  thought  accord- 
ing to  the  usual  electric  law  of  squares,  —  that  is  to  say, 
that  the  average  motion  of  one  phase  is  the  square  of  that 
which  precedes  it.     The  curve  is  thus :  — 

Assuming  that  the  change  of  phase  began  in  1500,  and 
that  the  new  Mechanical  Phase  dates  in  its  finished  form 
from  GaUleo,  Bacon,  and  Descartes,  with  a  certain  lag 
in  its  announcement  by  them,  —  say  from  1600,  —  the 
law  of  squares  gives  a  curve  like  that  of  ice,  water,  and 
steam,  running  off  to  the  infinite  in  almost  straight  lines 
at  either  end,  like  the  comet,  but  at  right  angles.  Sup- 
posing a  value  in  numbers  of  any  sort,  —  say  6,  36,  1296, 
—  and  assigning  1296  to  the  period  1600-1900,  the  pre- 
ceding religious  phase  would  have  a  value  of  only  36  as 
the  average  of  many  thousand  years,  representing  there- 
fore nearly  a  straight  fine,  while  the  twentieth  century 
would  be  represented  by  the  square  of  1296  or  what  is 
equivalent  to  a  straight  Une  to  infinity. 

Reversing  the  curve  to  try  the  time-sequence  by  the 
same  rule,  the  Mechanical  Phase  being  represented  by 
300  years,  the  Religious  Phase  would  require  not  less 
than  90,000.  Perhaps  this  result  might  not  exactly 
suit  a  physicist's  views,  but  if  he  accepts  the  sequence 


306  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

90,000  and  300  for  these  two  phases  in  time,  he  arrives 
at  some  cm'ious  results  for  the  future,  and  in  calculating 
the  period  of  the  fourth,  or  electric  phase,  he  must  be 
prepared  for  extreme  figures. 

No  question  in  the  series  is  so  vital  as  that  of  fixing 
the  limits  of  the  Mechanical  Phase.  Assuming,  as  has 
been  done,  the  year  1600  for  its  beginning,  the  question 
remains  to  decide  the  probable  date  of  its  close.  Perhaps 
the  physicist  might  regard  it  as  already  closed.  He 
might  say  that  the  highest  authority  of  the  mechanical 
universe  was  reached  about  1870,  and  that,  just  then, 
the  invention  of  the  dynamo  turned  society  sharply  into 
a  new  channel  of  electric  thought  as  different  from  the 
mechanical  as  electric  mass  is  different  from  astronomical 
mass.  He  might  assert  that  Faraday,  Clerk  Maxwell, 
Hertz,  Helmholz,  and  the  whole  electro-magnetic  school, 
thought  in  terms  quite  imintelligible  to  the  old  chemists 
and  mechanists.  The  average  man,  in  1850,  could  under- 
stand what  Davy  or  Darwin  had  to  say;  he  could  not 
understand  what  Clerk  Maxwell  meant.  The  later 
terms  were  not  translatable  into  the  earlier;  even  the 
mathematics  became  hyper-mathematical.  Possibly  a 
physicist  might  go  so  far  as  to  hold  that  the  most  arduous 
intellectual  effort  ever  made  by  man  with  a  distinct 
consciousness  of  needing  new  mental  powers,  was  made 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      307 

after  1870  in  the  general  effort  to  acquire  habits  of  electro- 
magnetic thought,  —  the  familiar  use  of  formulas  carry- 
ing indefinite  self-contradiction  into  the  conception  of 
force.  The  physicist  knows  best  his  own  difficulties, 
and  perhaps  to  him  the  process  of  evolution  may  seem 
easy,  but  to  the  mere  by-stander  the  gap  between  electric 
and  astronomic  mass  seems  greater  than  that  between 
Descartes  and  St.  Augustine,  or  Lord  Bacon  and  Thomas 
Aquinas.  The  older  ideas,  though  hostile,  were  in- 
telligible ;  the  idea  of  electro-magnetic-ether  is  not. 

Thus  it  seems  possible  that  another  generation,  trained 
after  1900  in  the  ideas  and  terms  of  electro-magnetism 
and  radiant  matter,  may  regard  that  date  as  marking 
the  sharpest  change  of  direction,  taken  at  the  highest 
rate  of  speed,  ever  effected  by  the  human  mind ;  a  change 
from  the  material  to  the  immaterial,  —  from  the  law  of 
gravitation  to  the  law  of  squares.  The  Phases  were 
real :  the  change  of  direction  was  measured  by  the  con- 
sternation of  physicists  and  chemists  at  the  discovery 
of  radium  which  was  quite  as  notorious  as  the  conster- 
nation of  the  Church  at  the  discovery  of  GaUleo ;  but  it 
is  the  affair  of  science,  not  of  historians,  to  give  it  a 
mathematical  value. 

Should  the  physicist  reject  the  division,  and  insist 
on  the  experience  of  another  fifty  or  a  hundred  years,  the 


308  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

consequence  would  still  be  trifling  for  the  fourth  term  of 
the  series.  Supposing  the  Mechanical  Phase  to  have 
lasted  300  years,  from  1600  to  1900,  the  next  or  Electric 
Phase  would  have  a  life  equal  to  VSOO,  or  about  seventeen 
years'  and  a  half,  when  —  that  is,  in  1917  —  it  would 
pass  into  another  or  Ethereal  Phase,  which,  for  half  a 
century,  science  has  been  promising,  and  which  would 
last  only  \/l7.5,  or  about  four  years,  and  bring  Thought 
to  the  limit  of  its  possibilities  in  the  year  1921.  It  may 
well  be !  Nothing  whatever  is  beyond  the  range  of  possi- 
bility ;  but  even  if  the  life  of  the  previous  phase,  1600- 
1900,  were  extended  another  hundred  years,  the  difference 
to  the  last  term  of  the  series  would  be  negligible.  In  that 
case,  the  Ethereal  Phase  would  last  till  about  2025. 

The  mere  fact  that  society  should  think  in  terms  of 
Ether  or  the  higher  mathematics  might  mean  little  or 
much.  According  to  the  Phase  Rule,  it  lived  from  re- 
mote ages  in  terms  of  fetish  force,  and  passed  from  that 
into  terms  of  mechanical  force,  which  again  led  to  terms 
of  electric  force,  without  fairly  realizing  what  had  hap- 
pened except  in  slow  social  and  political  revolutions. 
Thought  in  terms  of  Ether  means  only  Thought  in  terms 
of  itself,  or,  in  other  words,  pure  Mathematics  and  Meta- 
physics, a  stage  often  reached  by  individuals.  At  the 
utmost  it  could  mean  only  the  subsidence  of  the  current 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      309 

into  an  ocean  of  potential  thought,  or  mere  consciousness, 
which  is  also  possible,  like  static  electricity.  The  only 
consequence  might  be  an  indefinitely  long  stationary 
period,  such  as  John  Stuart  Mill  foresaw.  In  that  case, 
the  current  would  merely  cease  to  flow. 

But  if,  in  the  prodigiously  rapid  vibration  of  its  last 
phases,  Thought  should  continue  to  act  as  the  universal 
solvent  which  it  is,  and  should  reduce  the  forces  of  the 
molecule,  the  atom,  and  the  electron  to  that  costless 
servitude  to  which  it  has  reduced  the  old  elements  of 
earth  and  air,  fire  and  water ;  if  man  should  continue  to 
set  free  the  infinite  forces  of  nature,  and  attain  the  con- 
trol of  cosmic  forces  on  a  cosmic  scale,  the  consequences 
may  be  as  surprising  as  the  change  of  water  to  vapor, 
of  the  worm  to  the  butterfly,  of  radium  to  electrons.  At 
a  given  volume  and  velocity,  the  forces  that  are  concen- 
trated on  his  head  must  act. 

Such  seem  to  be,  more  or  less  probably,  the  lines  on 
which  any  physical  theory  of  the  universe  would  affect 
the  study  of  history,  according  to  the  latest  direction  of 
physics.  Comte's  Phases  adapt  themselves  easily  to 
some  such  treatment,  and  nothing  in  philosophy  or  meta- 
physics forbids  it.  The  figure  used  for  illustration  is 
immaterial  except  so  far  as  it  limits  the  nature  of  the 
attractive  force.     In  any  case  the  theory  will  have  to 


310  THE  DEGRADATION  OF  THE  DEMOCRATIC  DOGMA 

assume  that  the  mind  has  always  figured  its  motives  as 
reflections  of  itself,  and  that  this  is  as  true  in  its  con- 
ception of  electricity  as  in  its  instinctive  imitation  of  a 
God.  Always  and  everywhere  the  mind  creates  its  own 
universe,  and  pursues  its  own  phantoms;  but  the  force 
behind  the  image  is  always  a  reahty,  —  the  attractions 
of  occult  power.  If  values  can  be  given  to  these  at- 
tractions, a  physical  theory  of  history  is  a  mere  matter 
of  physical  formula,  no  more  complicated  than  the 
formulas  of  Willard  Gibbs  or  Clerk  Maxwell;  but  the 
task  of  framing  the  formula  and  assigning  the  values  be- 
longs to  the  physicist,  not  to  the  historian;  and  if  one 
such  arrangement  fails  to  accord  with  the  facts,  it  is 
for  him  to  try  another,  to  assign  new  values  to  his  vari- 
ables, and  to  verify  the  results.  The  variables  them- 
selves can  hardly  suffer  much  change. 

If  the  physicist-historian  is  satisfied  with  neither  of 
the  known  laws  of  mass,  —  astronomical  or  electric,  — 
and  cannot  arrange  his  variables  in  any  combination  that 
will  conform  with  a  phase-sequence,  no  resource  seems 
to  remain  but  that  of  waiting  until  his  physical  problems 
shall  be  solved,  and  he  shall  be  able  to  explain  what  Force 
is.  As  yet  he  knows  almost  as  little  of  material  as  of 
immaterial  substance.  He  is  as  perplexed  before  the 
phenomena  of  Heat,  Light,  Magnetism,  Electricity,  Gravi- 


THE  RULE  OF  PHASE  APPLIED  TO  HISTORY      311 

tation,  Attraction,  Repulsion,  Pressure,  and  the  whole 
schedule  of  names  used  to  indicate  unknown  elements, 
as  before  the  common,  infinitely  familiar  fluctuations 
of  his  own  Thought  whose  action  is  so  astounding  on  the 
direction  of  his  energies.  Probably  the  solution  of  any 
one  of  the  problems  will  give  the  solution  for  them  all. 

Washington,  January  1,  1909. 


INDEX 


Acceleration,  movement  of,  289. 

Adams,  Brooks,  inheritance,  vii ; 
introduction,  xi ;  relations  with 
Henry  Adams,  1,  138;  "Emanci- 
pation of  Massachusetts,"  87; 
"Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay," 
88;    a  forecast,  116. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  75. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  Jr.,  88. 

Adams  family,  93. 

Adams,  Henry,  scientific  methods, 
viii;  pose  in  "Education,"  6,  103; 
"Theory  of  Phase,"  7;  aptitude 
for  science,  35;  "Law  of  Civili- 
zation and  Decay,"  90,  99 ;  letter 
to  Am.  Historical  Assn.,  96,  125 ; 
on  arrested  civilization,  98;  on 
democracy's  failure,  108 ;  prediction 
of  catastrophe.  111,  115;  "Letter 
to  Teachers  of  History,"  112,  137; 
"Theory  of  Phase  in  History," 
113;  belief  in  chaos,  122;  "Ten- 
dency of  History,"  125. 

Adams,  John,  42,  93;  on  report  on 
weights,  46. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  113;  faith  in 
democracy,  v,  77 ;  faith  in  God,  vi, 
26,  28,  33,  53,  76;  a  scientist,  9, 
52 ;  tragedy  of  presidency,  10 ; 
internal  improvements,  20,  25,  107 ; 
resolution,  21n ;  resigns  from  Senate, 
21 ;  Missouri  question,  23 ;  slavery, 
23,  29;  letter  to  Upham,  24; 
scientific  development  of  internal 
resources,  29 ;  letter  to  J.  Edwards, 
29 ;  reflections  on  belief,  33 ;  ambi- 
tions, 34 ;  report  on  weights  and 
measures,  ix,  37 ;  live-oak  forest, 
62  ;  elected  to  Congress,  55  ;  Smith- 
son  bequest,  58 ;  on  astronomy,  59 ; 
invited  to  Cincinnati,  63 ;  journey, 
68;  results  of  his  influence,  73; 
on  Jackson,  77 ;  civil  service,  81 ; 
duration  of  Union,  107;  belief  in 
chaos,  122. 


Adams,  Louisa  Catherina,  75. 
Adams,  Thomas  Boylston,  47. 
Agassiz,  Louis,  on  man,  177. 
Ancients,  battle  with  moderns,  245. 
Animals,  stunting  of,  227. 
Anthropologists,  on  evolution,  170. 
Ape,  anthropoid,  297. 
Archiac,  Etienne  Jules  Adolphe  Des- 

mier  de  Saint  Simon,  Vicomte  d', 

162.  , 

Arndt,  Friedrich,  176,  237. 
Association,  American   Historical,  H. 

Adams'  letter  as  president,  125. 
Astronomy,    J.    Q.    Adama     on,    60; 

favored  by  government,  73 ;   science 

of  chaos,  122. 
Attraction,  280. 

Bache,  Alexander  Dallas,  petition  for 

obeervatorieis,  58. 
Bacon,  Francis,  287 ;  object  of  science, 

289. 
Bancroft,  George,  147. 
Bankers,  influence  of,  120. 
Benton,  Thomas  HmI,  32,  33. 
Bergson,  Henri,  life  as  forces,  204. 

Bernouilli, ,  190. 

Bigelow,  Jacob,  75. 

Blandet, ,  162,  164,  166. 

Branch,  John,  53. 

Branca,  WUhelm,  176,  237. 

Brooks,  Peter  Chardon,  63. 

Brunhes,     Bernhard,     philosophy     of 

history,  254,  258. 
Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  126. 
Bumstead,  Henry  Andrews,  consulted 

on  scientific  question,  ix. 

Calhoun,  John  Caldwell,  44. 

Canals,  projected  by  Washington,  14 ; 
travelling  by,  68. 

Canning,  Stratford,  41,  44. 

Capital  of  nation,  Washington's  con- 
ception, 17. 

Carnot,  Nicolas  L^oohard  Sadi,  141. 


313 


314 


INDEX 


Catastrophe,  law  of  energy,  148. 
Centre,  economic,  of  world,  109. 
Chaos  of  democratic  mediocrity,  115; 

astronomy,  science  of,  122. 
Child,  creature  of  state,  260. 
Church  and  a  science  of  history,  129, 

131. 
Ciamician,  Giacomo,  196 ;  vital  energy 

and  will,  193. 
Cincinnati,  observatory,  63. 
Clausius,    Rudolf    Julius    Enamanuel, 

140,  231. 
Clay,  Henry,  internal  improvements, 

21 ;     on   civil   service,    82 ;     on   the 

future,  83. 
Comet,  300 ;  of  1843,  302. 
Communism,  130,  131. 
Competition,  78,  79,  85 ;  war  and,  116. 
Comte,  Auguste,  284,  309 ;    phases  of 

the  human  mind,  285,  293. 
Consciousness  defined,  204. 
Cope,  Edward  Drinker,  on  descent  of 

man,  172. 
Corwin,  Thomas,  70. 
Cotton,  invention  of  gin,  22,  31. 
Currency,  effect  of  debasement,  95. 

Dalton,  John,  190. 

Dana,    James    Dwight,    on    stunting 

animal  life,  227. 
Darwin,   Charles,   218 ;    influence   of, 

126,   128;    optimism,   130;    law  of 

evolution,  152,  159,  196 ;    evolution 

of    man,    170 ;     on    the    eye,    226 ; 

energy  in  theory,  241. 
Dastre,  Jules  Albert  Frank,  on  vital 

energy,  154. 
Davies,  Charles,  on  report  on  weights, 

49. 
Davis,  Charles  Henry,  57. 
Decrepitude,  social,  signs  of,  186. 
Dedham,  Mass.,  meeting,  67. 
Degradation     of     energy,     83,     108 ; 

beginning  of,  167 ;   universities  and, 

245  ;    final  word,  256. 
Degradationist,  position  of,  157. 
Democracy,     degradation,     84,     104, 

108,  121 ;   failure,  84. 
Descartes,  Ren6,  262,  287 ;    on  man, 

232. 
Direction,  in  science,  279,  286. 
Dissipation  of  energy,  law  of,  141,  152, 

154,  179. 


Dollo,  Louis,  law  of  evolution,  170. 
Driesch,    Hans,     "Vitalismus,"     147; 

on  descent,  250. 
Drosera,  242. 
Durkheim,  Emile,  pessimism,  188. 

Earth,  shrinkage  of  the,  165. 
Education,  of  waste  or  conservation, 

78  ;    and  hesitation,  186. 
Edwards,  Justin,  letter  of  J.  Q.  Adams, 

29,  80. 
Electricity,  274,  304. 
"Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,"  88. 
Energy,  degradation  of,  83,  195 ;   law 

of     conservation,     140,     164,     209; 

law   of   dissipation,    141,    152,    154, 

179,    212;     solar,    143,    148,    164; 

vital,  146,  149,  154,  193,  201,  221; 

social,  154 ;   reason,  192 ;   will,  193 ; 

thought,    207 ;     economy    of,    215 ; 

development  of  physical,  233. 
Entropy,  law  of,  142,  154, 209,  242,  251. 
Equilibrium,  stable,  248,  258 ;  defined, 

267. 
Ether,    275,    308;     universal    solvent, 

270 ;  a  phase,  278. 
Evolution,    210,    231 ;      Darwin    on, 

152 ;     change    in    discussion,     170 ; 

DoUo's  law,  170 ;   upward,  244. 
Evolutionist,      conquests      of,       157; 

dilemma  of,  214  ;    compromise,  256. 
Experience,  limit  of,  272. 
Eye,  complexity,  226. 

Family,  dissolution  of  modem,  2,  119; 

origin  and  woman's  share,  3. 
Faraday,  Michael,  272,  273,  291. 
Faye,  Herv6  Auguste  Etienne  Albans, 

on  end  of  universe,  149. 
Flammarion,  Camille,  184,  189;   solar 

catastrophe,  182. 
Flechsig,  Paul,  brain  and  will,  200. 
Flemming,  Sir  Sandford,  on  report  on 

weights,  50. 
Fluid,  274. 

Ford,  Worthington  Chauncey,  x. 
Form,  286. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  285. 
Free-will,  232. 

Galileo  Galilei,  132,  220,  287. 
Gallatin,    Albert,    report    on  internal 
improvements,  21. 


INDEX 


315 


Gary,  Elbert  Henry,  116. 

Gaudry,  Jean  Albert,  167,  226,  227. 

Geologists,  teaching,  166 ;   on  ioe-cap, 

179. 
Ghent,  peace  commissioners,  1 18. 
Gibbon,  Edward  245. 
Gibbs,   Josiah  Willard,   190;    rule  of 

phases,  237,  267. 
Gilliss,  James  Melville,  57. 
Gold-bugs,  96. 

Goldscheid,  Rudolph,  on  direction,  279. 
Grasset,  weakness  of  will,  253. 
Gray,  Andrew,  on  death  of  all  things, 

150. 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, 

114. 
Grinnell,  Joseph,  70. 
Guy  de  Lusignan,  faith  in  the  cross,  54. 

Haeckel,  Ernst  Heinrich,  evolution, 
153,  156;  of  man,  171. 

Hallock,  William,  on  report  on  weights, 
51. 

Hartmann,  Eduard  von,  193,  196, 
204,  231 ;  end  of  vital  processes,  151. 

Harvard  University,  degree  for  Jack- 
son, 77. 

Heat,  Voss  on,  270. 

Heer,  Oswald,  166 ;   arctic  flora,  160. 

Helmholtz,  Hermann  Ludwig  Ferdi- 
nand von,  140,  231. 

Hertz,  Heinrich  Rudolf,  277. 

History,  tendency  of,  126 ;  science  of, 
126,  148;  teaching  of,  97,  189,  210, 
261 ;  science  of  vital  energy,  207 ; 
and  degradation,  243 ;  Brunhes  on, 
255 ;  rule  of  phase,  267 ;  matter 
and  processes,  280 ;  and  physics, 
283;  mechanical  phase,  293,  305; 
electrical  phase,  308. 

Hopf,  Ludwig,  174,  175,  176,  237. 

Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  178. 

Hyper-thought,  276. 

Inertia,  158. 

Intellect  and  instinct,  206. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  internal  improve- 
ments, 21,  27;  in  Florida,  22; 
principle  of  evil  and  a  barbarian, 
77 ;   abuse  of  office,  82. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  on  slavery,  18. 

Johnson,  William  Cost,  70. 


Joly,  John,  239. 

Jones,  Mrs.  Mary  C.,  advises  on 
introduction,  xii. 

Kelvin,  Lord,  see  William  Thomson. 
Kendall,  Amos,  53. 
Kerner,  Anton,  on  vital  force,  147. 
Klaatsch,  Hermann,  on  human  teeth, 

174 ;   primitive  man,  240. 
Krainsky,  N.  197. 

Labor,  and  a  science  of  history,  129. 

Lalande,  Andr6,  on  thought,  203. 

Lands,  public,  a  national  trust,  27; 
dissipated,  31. 

Lapparent,  Albert  Auguste  Cochon 
de,  diminution  of  solar  heat,  163, 
164;  vegetation,  167,  168;  on 
future  of  earth,  168,  184. 

Law  of  dissipation  of  energy,  141. 

Law,  origin  of  municipal,  80 ;  weak- 
ness of  human  codes,  80. 

"Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay,"  88, 
99. 

Le  Bon,  Gustave,  254 ;  on  the  crowd, 
252  ;   enfeeblement  of  will,  253. 

Lemur,  hypothetical,  172. 

Lex  Poppaea,  187. 

Light-houses  of  the  sky,  61. 

Littre,  fimile,  285. 

Live-oak,  J.  Q.  Adams'  interest,  52. 

Loeb,  Jacques,  197  ;  will  and  mechan- 
ical action,  198. 

London,  financial  supremacy,  110. 

Lunacy,  increase  of,  254. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  H.  Adams  and,  35 ; 
law  of  uniformity,  153,  159,  165. 

Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  Lord, 
147,  186,  245. 

McLean,  John,  and  public  office,  82. 

Man,  an  automaton,  vii ;  appearance 
of,  161,  167;  limit  of  development, 
170 ;  evolution,  171 ;  end  of  series, 
177;  and  nature,  214,  229;  waste- 
fulness of,  216 ;  no  creative  energy, 
230 ;  primitive,  240 ;  mental  devel- 
opment, 259. 

Mason,  George,  on  slavery,  18. 

Massachusetts,  Emancipation  of,  88. 

Mathematics  in  physics,  272. 

Maury,  Matthew  Fontaine,  57. 

Maxwell,  James  Clerk,  279. 


316 


INDEX 


Maysville  road  veto,  28. 

Metaphysics  and  physics,  196. 

Meyer,  Eduard,  man's  mental  develop- 
ment, 259. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  285,  309. 

Missouri  question,  J.  Q.  Adams  on,  23. 

Mitchel,  Ormsby  McKnight,  Cin- 
cinnati observatory,  63. 

Mitchell,  Thomas  R.,  21. 

Moderns,  battle  with  ancients,  245. 

Monism,  240. 

"Mont  St.  Michel  and  Chartres,"  2, 
102. 

Morgan,  Jacques  Jean  Marie  de,  184 ; 
on  future  of  earth,  181. 

Motion,  potential,  in  space,  270. 

Nebula  of  Orion,  300. 
Newcomb,  Simon,  122. 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  290. 
Nietzsche,  Friedrich  Wilhelm,  196. 
Nourse,  Joseph  Everett,  59. 

Observatory,  naval,  58 ;  Adams'  name 

for,  61 ;   Cincinnati,  63. 
Office,  theory  of  public,  81. 
Orion,  nebula  of,  300. 
Ostwald,     Wilhelm,     197,     236;      on 

Kelvin's  law,  142,   154 ;    motion  of 

mind,  198. 

Panmixia,  235. 

Paris,  peace  commissioners  at,  117. 

Pasley,  Sir  Charles  William,  on  report 

on  weights,  48. 
Peirce,  Benjamin,  5. 
Pendulum  measurements,  41. 
Perfectability,  human,  30,  53 ;  Darwin 

on,  130,  159. 
Pessimism,  257. 
Phase,   in   History,   Theory   of,    114; 

rule    of,    237,    267;     defined,    267; 

hierarchy  of,  274. 
Physicist,  explanation  of  history,  213 ; 

use  of  energies,  243. 
Physics  and  metaphysics,  197. 
Poincarfe,  Jules  Henri,  on  monism,  240. 
Poincar6,    Lucien,    242 ;     anarchy    in 

science,  239. 
Pressure,  280. 

Property,  and  a  science  of  history,  129. 
Psychologists,  on  energy,  197. 
Psychology,  physical,  234. 


Radium,  277,  307. 

Reason  and  tropism,  198 ;  energy  and, 

208,  229 ;    accounting  for,  242. 
Reformation,  the.  111. 
Reinke,     Johannes,     204,     239;      on 

energetik,  258. 
Relics,  fall  into  disfavor,  64. 
Religion,  294. 
Renaissance,  287. 
Rome,  fall  of,  89. 

Rosa,  extinction  of  species,  170,  177. 
Rosenstiehl,  A.,   270. 
Rousseau,    Jean    Jacques,    128,    237; 

on  the  thinker,  203. 
Rush,    Richard,    68;     on    report    on 

weights,  45. 
Rutledge,  John,  on  slavery,  19. 

St.  Paul,  on  competition  of  flesh  and 
spirit,  85,  105. 

Saporta,  Louis  Charles  Joseph  Gaston, 
Marquis  de,  225;  vegetation,  160, 
167. 

Schopenhauer,  Arthur,  196 ;  will  as 
energy,  193. 

Science  of  history,  127 ;  absolute,  129 ; 
chaos  of,  239. 

Scudder,  Horace  Elisha,  87. 

Slavery,  Washington's  views,  18; 
Virginian  opposition,  18 ;  com- 
promise in  constitution,  19 ;  sup- 
pression of  trade,  22,  28 ;  extinction 
of,  29. 

Smith,  Adam,  128. 

Smithson,  James,  bequest,  58. 

Socialism,  130. 

Society,  decadence  of,  247;  an 
organism,  258. 

Sociologists,  on  society,  186,  188. 

SoUds,  274. 

Solution,  definition  of,  269. 

Space,  275. 

State,  and  a  science  of  history,  129. 

Stewart,  Balfour,  232. 

Stoney,  G.  Johnstone,  274. 

Sun,  condensation  of,  164;  economy 
of,  218. 

Swift,  Jonathan,  "Battle  of  the  Books," 
245. 

Tait,  Peter  Guthrie,  146. 
Teeth,  human,  number  of,  174. 
Temperature,  280. 


INDEX 


817 


Tendency  of  history,  125. 

Thayer,  Minot,  67. 

Thomson,  Hanna,  on  brain  and  will, 

199. 
Thomson,  William,  Lord  Kelvin,  140, 

220,  231 ;  dissipation  of  energy,  145, 

152,  162 ;    on  will,  201 ;    exhaustion 

of  oxygen,  216 ;  confession  of  failure, 

238. 
Thought,    nature    of,    203,    273;     as 

motion,  219 ;    solvent  of,  281 ;    and 

phase,  283  ;    deflection  curve,  303 ; 

acceleration,  303. 
Time,  change  of  value,  222. 
Topinard,     Paul,    on    human    brain, 

175,  176;    end  of  earth,  177;    man 

and  nature,  178. 
Trade  union,  principle  of  the,  121. 
Transformation,  191,  210,  241. 
Turgot,  Anne  Robert  Jacques,  285. 
Tyndall,  John,  on  solar  energy,  143. 

Uniformity,  law  of,  Lyell's,  153,  159, 

165. 
United   States,    civil   war,    object   of, 

vii;    and  Great  Britain,  114. 
Unity,  241. 
Universities,   Washington's,   17,    106 ; 

evolution  upward,  244 ;  degradation 

dogma,  245. 
Upham,  Charles  Wentworth,  letter  of 

J.  Q.  Adams,  24. 

Vapor,  274. 

Vegetation,  changes  in,  160;    climax, 
167. 


Vibration,  and  direction,  279. 

Vienna,  Congress  of,  1 18. 

Virginia    and    slavery,    18,    22 ;     and 

industry,  106. 
Vitalists,  146. 
Volume,  281. 

Voss,  Isaac,  defintion  of  heat,  270. 
Vulpian,   Edme  F61ix  Alfred,   human 

brain,  175. 

Wade,    Herbert    T.,    on    report    on 

weights,  51. 
Wagner,  Richard,  246. 
War,  breeders  of,  80,  116. 
Washington,       George,       constructive 

theory,   14,   106;    capital  city,   17; 

university,    17,    106 ;     slavery,    18 ; 

personality,  84,  104 ;  idea  of  govern- 
ment, 105 ;   body  of,  107. 
Washington,  John  Augustine,  107. 
Washington  city,  poverty  in  scientific 

appliances,  42. 
Weights  and  measures,  J.  Q.  Adams' 

report,  37 ;   metric  system,  39. 
Whitney,  Eli,  cotton  gin,  22,  31. 
Will  as  energy,  193,  199,  208;    brain 

and,  200 ;    enfeeblement  of,  253. 
Winslow,     Forbes,     on    degeneration, 

254. 
Woman  and  the  family,  3 ;  degradation 

of,  111 ;  unsexing  of,  118. 
Wundt,  Wilhelm  Max,  197. 
Wyeth,  George,  on  slavery,  18. 

Zittel,  Karl  Alfred  von,  on  descent, 
260. 


Friated  in  the  United  States  of  Amerioa. 


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